A Light in the Black
by TheTwelfthPeer
Summary: In the grim darkness of the 41st millenium, there is only war. For Alexander Folke, Imperial Guard, war is the only path to a secure future for his sister and nephew, and he's forced to gamble with men's lives to see them through to the end.
1. Chapter 1

**By Official Remit of the Departmento Munitorum**

 ** _FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY_**

"Ask not what the Emperor can do for you, but how best you may serve His undying Will."-Lord Commander Solar Macharius

* * *

 **+++ONE+++**

The pounding of thousands of guns lined wheel to wheel made a sound that shattered the earth. Or so it seemed to Lieutenant Alex Folke, of the 312th Skanian Infantry Regiment. The artillery regiments behind his platoon were putting shell to gun as fast as possible, entirely dedicated on saving as many lives of their own infantry as they could. They would do this by the simple expedient of pounding the enemy front line for the next ten minutes, and then cease their barrage once the infantry went forward with bayonets fixed.

Folke had decided not to wear the gray great-coat issued to him upon his joining the regiment, and that was a decision he was regretting in the pre-dawn fog and cold, even for a Skanian, where winter in some areas lasted nine months of the year. The fog clung so thickly that he couldn't even see his breath misting.

His platoon sergeants were ensuring that the men were ready for the cessation of the artillery. He stood and shivered for a few minutes as they finished last minute equipment checks, tightening straps, loosening the daggers from home in their sheaths, ensuring their lasrifles were loaded with fresh magazines.

When they finished, Folke drew his officer's infantry saber and knelt in the snow before his men. They followed suit, gray tunics and pants looking like smudges of ash against the snow. Their faces were pale, and Folke knew his would be, as well.

"I had requested a chaplain attend us before we begin," he started in the Skanian war-cant, and then smiled. "Unfortunately for us, they're all busy elsewhere. I shall lead us in prayer, gentlemen." There was a quiet murmur of assent to this announcement, and Folke checked his watch. _O435 hours. Almost time, then._

"Our Undying God-Emperor upon the Golden Throne upon most Holy Terra," Folke incanted. "Grant us that this day we might achieve victory over the heretic in Your name, Immortal Emperor, and that the men of Skania perform valiant and mighty deeds for You. We honor You, Emperor, who sacrificed Himself for the meanest of us men, and so we shall sacrifice ourselves for You if needs must. Praise the Emperor, and strike down His foes," he finished. His men chanted it with him, and they all stood. _Emperor, grant that I lead most of them home_ , Folke added silently. He stood, then, and kept his sword loose. The platoon made the sign of the Aquila as one, and from their canteens, freshly filled, they all poured libations to the Emperor.

Folke did so as well, and then he checked his watch again. _O438 hours_. Two minutes. Soon, then. This was it. _Emperor, preserve my men!_ In the distance, the guns began to fall silent, and the tank drivers gunned their idling engines to warm them up in the pre-dawn cold. The snow fell with a quiet vengeance, intent on blanketing this part of the planet, and Folke reached up to touch the small aquila and red metal leaf gifted to him by his sister,

The leaf was the symbol of the Blessed Saint Langley, the red-haired refugee girl-child from offworld, who had led the men of Skania to victory over a traitor warband ravaging their world. Then she'd led them to glory on a dozen worlds for a century afterwards, before giving her life to destroy a traitor Titan. Every home on Skania had a shrine to the Emperor and Saint Langley, and Folke's had been no different.

The silence fell heavily and eerily on the forest. He went to where the tree line thinned enough for the open farmland they were to march across could be seen. Snow had started to fall again, and it coated the shoulders of his tunic, hiding the rank insignia. He shook his head to displace the snow from his hair, and behind him, his men formed into line.

Their battalion was between two other Skanian battalions, even if they were from different regiments, and Folke's men, tribe-and-woodsmen from outside Skania's only hive, felt as if they had been returned to the sheltering arms of a brother.

"Fix bayonets," he ordered, and every man of his fifty-strong platoon obeyed. A ganger from the Stockarta hive, it pleased him to have the instant obedience and respect that it implied from his men.

Down the line, the order to advance came in the form of three sharp whistle blasts, and Folke lifted his sword up. "Advance!" He called, and began the slow, deliberate, measured march forward. He spared a final, silent prayer asking Saint Langley to keep most of his men alive and his sister, who should have been safely behind the lines five miles away, in good health.

Along the line, the infantry began moving forward. The first line, Folke knew, at two men deep, with a thousand men in a battalion, and thirty-seven battalions involved in the first line in the attack, would stretch over fourteen miles. Spaced behind the first infantry battalions would be the Hellhound light tanks, with their flamethrowers. Intended to leap ahead of the infantry and burn anything to death with their flamers, they would in turn be supported by Chimaera troop transports carrying the mechanized infantry, Tauros Venator variant light vehicles, and Leman Russ main battle tanks.

The world Folke was on was Corcusani. It lay Rimward in Segmentum Tempestus, not far from San Leor. The planet had risen in rebellion, declaring for the Tau Empire, taking two neighbors with it, and the Guard had responded with overwhelming force. Their corps had been diverted from the on-going Black Crusade to Corcusani, and now the infantrymen went forward with glinting steel on the tips of their lasrifles. The might of the Imperium knew no limitations in its wrath, save that Corcusani was a civilized world and the home of a combined commandery of several Adeptas Sororitas orders.

All that passed in Folke's mind in the brief instant he stood alone against the backdrop of the shadowed forest, and it felt like he was highlighted and the perfect target. He was. All along the opposing tree line twenty meters away, Folke could almost hear the small 'clicks' and 'snicks' of heavy stubbers being mated to pintle mounts and rounds being chambered, it was that quiet. Then the rest of the infantrymen stepped out of the trees behind their officers, and began making noise.

Some, like the 98th Lennach, with their swirling skirts instead of trousers or breeches, had their infernal warpipes to skirl and screech. Others, like the Sachsen Grenadiers, began chanting something in their war-cant. And the Skanians behind Folke, and to either side of his regiment, began singing the Emperor's Prayer in the Skanian war-cant.

Folke began singing with his men. It helped take his mind off the fear threatening to turn his guts to water and was currently shrinking his testicles into his stomach. Then there seemed to be a silent signal, and the enemy defensive line began firing. First he heard the chatter of the stubbers, the semi and automatic rifles issued to Planetary Defense Forces that were too poor to afford lasrifles, and then the roar of the heavy stubbers. He wanted to drop face first into the dirt churned up by the creeping artillery barrage, but instead he stayed standing.

He stayed at the front, advancing at the ordered slow march, sword held aloft. Why hadn't he been killed yet? He watched as a traitor on the trigger of a heavy stubber swiveled the mount in his direction. Time seemed to slow down, and Folke thought he felt the leaf or Aquila tingle against the skin of his chest beneath his shirt and tunic. The traitor had brown hair and a blonde beard, Folke saw. He thought that was odd, perhaps a sign of mutation, or merely parents with different colored hair. He heard the _coughs_ that indicated lasrifle fire, and red lances began to hammer into the enemy line.

And then something _punched_ him in the side with a huge _roar_ , just his entire side, and Folke was toppled over. The sword stayed with him thanks only to the loop wrapped around his wrist and attached to the sword's hilt. A ringing went through his skull, and Folke wanted to curl up. Instead, he forced his head up through a supreme effort of will, gritting his teeth and swallowing back on the urge to cry. His head lifted, he swiveled it to look for what had knocked him over. He had no clue and saw nothing, but he would guess it had been an uncomfortably close artillery shell. Thirty meters away to his right, and down a line of bowled over infantrymen, the main gun on a Leman Russ was still smoking. Then the coax bolter and the commander's stubber added their din to the ringing in his ears, and Folke grimaced at the sheer stupidity of being knocked over by an artillery shell he'd never heard.

He got his arms beneath him, sword still dangling uselessly. He couldn't hear anything. He shook his head, heart pounding. If he couldn't hear, he couldn't command. If he couldn't command, he couldn't keep Elise safe. _Get up, you hiver scum._ It sounded like the voice of his recruiting and then training Sergeant, a huge, wicked man that had taken a perverse pleasure in the suffering of his recruits. But he'd never bent them more than they could snap back, never broken them permanently.

So now Folke blessed the name of Training Sergeant Cathurin, and drove himself up to his feet. Behind him, his men were doing the same, and so he turned back to the front, to the traitor PDF infantry that had declared for the greater good of the Tau. He took one step forward, then another. He heard only a ringing in his ears, but now the battlefield smelled like the ozone of thousands of lasrifles hammering at an enemy, of the cordite of the Leman Russ guns.

He drew his laspistol, a heavy model preferred by some cavalry units-he had traded for it with a week's worth of amasec rations to a trooper from the 87th Duchess Elizabeth Cuirassiers. Folke was hammered by another wave of sound, one he heard even through the ringing in his ears, and he realized the Leman Russ tanks were ripple firing now. Ripple firing meant they were taking turns by platoon, four tanks shooting their main guns to suppress the enemy heavy stubber and bolter nests, and their coaxial and pintle-mounted supplementary bolters and stubbers chattering the while.

Folke and his platoon were nine meters from the enemy line now, and by some unspoken signal, gaps opened in the Imperium's line through which the Hellhounds and Chimaeras came, engines roaring. Not willing to be out-done by mechanized infantry, Folke swore soundlessly and abandoned the disciplined march that might still have been blunted by carefully sighted enemy artillery or mortars. He bellowed a war cry in the Skanian war-cant and leapt forward. The last three meters seemed to fly under him, and if his men didn't come with him, then he would die a hero, at least.

There was a wall of sandbags on the top of the berm thrown up when they'd dug their trench just outside the tree line, behind which a stubber sat silent, the crew waiting for something, an order, perhaps. Folke's running start allowed him to jump onto the bags, where a bayonet jabbed at his vulnerable stomach. He batted it aside with his sword, blew the man's head off with his pistol, and then hacked halfway into another man's throat on the back-swing.

He jumped down into the trench, landing on a third man, knocking his cap off, and then Folke was into the stubber nest, roaring a wordless challenge. This was what the Administratum issued pay for. The trench was too tightly pressed for the enemy to use their bayonets or for Folke to use his sword, so he jammed it through the throat of the man he'd knocked down. Folke got his forearm up in time to block the downward thrust from a faceless enemy's bayonet. He jammed his pistol into the man's gut, pulled the trigger, and was rewarded with a gun butt across the back of his head. His world went white for a brief second, and he tried to slump to his knees, but was stopped by the press of the bodies. A hand on the webbing on his back grabbed him and lifted him up to standing. A wickedly long Skanian dagger came from beside Folke's head, stabbing into the eye of the man to Folke's right, and then the rest of the platoon were there, dropping into the trench with war cries and entreaties to the Emperor on their lips.

The Leman Russ' had fallen silent, and so Folke could hear, some. "Clear the bodies out," he ordered. First Squad set to tossing them over and behind the bags they'd come over, while Second and Third began digging with their E-tools, fortifying the now-front of the position. Fourth Squad began shifting the sandbags and heavy stubber, an ancient model reminiscent of the kind still used by the Skanian PDF forces that the 312th had trained with for the time before embarking on their troop ship.

In every direction, Folke could hear the chatter of bolter and heavy stubber fire, and the cough of lasrifles. Every thirty seconds or so, the report of a Leman Russ speaking its fury sounded, silencing all else for the brief milliseconds it echoed across the battlefield. "Vox!" Folke roared, and the vox operator came up. "Call Company HQ," he ordered, "report that we've taken our first objective and are fortifying it as a fall-back position in the event we're repulsed at our secondary objective." The vox operator went off, leaving Folke with the command section of his platoon.

He heard the skirl of the Lennacher war-pipes, and he wanted to laugh. He stood, because cowering behind a sandbag or behind a body never won a war, and watched as the 98th hit their target, half a klick away, with bayonets fixed and a paean to the Emperor on their lips. They washed over the enemy resistance like a snow-lion of Skania devouring one of the giant horned-horses after a bitter winter.

Beside him the platoon sergeant, his second came up. "What a sight," the tall man said. Going by the name of Theodorus, he wasn't a Skanian. Instead, Theodorus was a Troscan, one of the only survivors of the 87th Troscan Legionnaires and their bitter and hard-fought defense of the agri-world Fulkros.

"Aye," Folke said. "Have we received our next objective?" Miles away, a Baneblade, one of the precious few afforded to this Guard expedition, _roared_ its fury and the earth shook beneath them. Theodorus nodded.

"Yes sir. We're to link up with the rest of the company and advance to assault the village of Beecher's Grove. Navy auspex scans indicate that there's a concentration of enemy force there, but not enough to pose a problem to a company of Guardsmen." The unspoken words were _they're just PDF infantrymen, and no match for the men of the Emperor's hammer._ Folke wanted to warn Theodorus for underestimating the locals, even if they were traitorous scum, but as the man was nearly a half-standard century older than him, felt it wasn't his place.

"Go ahead and rest!" Folke called to his platoon. "Is there any kind of timeline to it?" Theodorus shook his head, then shrugged.

"They just want us there in an hour." He handed a dataslate to Folke, with their route of march indicated. The village, which on the map seemed to be no larger than one grand house, and fifteen or so less grand family dwellings, was labelled 'Beecher's Grove.'

"I wonder who Beecher was," Folke murmured. The map, as laid out, said that they were only twenty minutes' march from the rally point to meet with the rest of the company, and that boded well, he decided. If the company or battalion had suffered undue casualties, they'd have already been ordered rotated back to the initial defensive line. "Ten minutes," he told Theodorus. "Then on their bloody feet and ready to go. We'll make it in fifteen minutes. We're not the God-Emperor's Light Infantry for no reason," he said with pride.

The Platoon Sergeant indicated his affirmative response and left Folke to stand and stare and think about the next fight. Whoever Beecher was, Folke hoped he wouldn't mind them rooting out the xeno-loving scum that had turned his namesake into a target worthy of the Guard's notice. _Emperor and Saint, give me the strength to see my men through this,_ he prayed silently.


	2. Chapter 2

**+++TWO+++**

 _"We remind you that victory is the Emperor's right, and any found hampering or delaying this will be treated as heretics." - Regimental Standard_

The map had lied. They had taken thirty minutes to get to the rally point, and the platoon spent the entire time cursing the Navy and whatever lazy bastard had been running the auspex. Folke thought he'd jogged nearly double the distance, considering he'd gone up and down the column, encouraging, chivvying, and castigating his men into moving faster. They were the 312th Light, Emperor damn it, and they would prove the light infantry's reputation again today. First to fight, last to leave, three miles' march in half an hour was nothing compared to what the Honored First had done at one of the numerous battles of Cadia, marching for thirty-two hours straight and then hitting the flank of a heretical Blood-sworn regiment.

The company had one mortar team. They were busy dropping smoke shells into their tube as fast as they could, and Folke's platoon passed the expanded rifle pit they were using as an emplacement at a jog, lasrifles held high, Folke leading the way. One of the ammo bearers waved jauntily between tossing shells to the loader called 'Emperor protects, brothers!'

"Nielsten," Folke called. Nielsten, the runner, came up running, rifle slung across his chest. Erik didn't salute, for the men were under strict orders not to do so in the field. He indicated a stand of trees to the left of the road that he wanted Nielsten to check. Nielsten nodded and then began jogging forwards. There was the echo of pulse rifle report, and then he toppled back, smoke rising from the neat remnants of his head, where the enemy had placed a well-aimed shot.

"Sniper!" someone yelled, and Folke dropped to the well-trod dirt of the path. He snatched the man's m/79 Lasrifle from where he'd fallen backwards, then squirmed his way behind the body, where it absorbed a badly-timed pulse rifle shot aimed at Folke's head. He reached for the man's bayonet, tried to tug it loose. It was stuck at an awkward angle under the body, so he scrabbled in the dirt for the whole thing, sheath and all. He swore, gave it up as a bad job, and then cut the damn thing free with his own dagger. He attached the bayonet to the lug on the lasrifle, then rolled the runner's body over on its side to provide a taller piece of cover.

He waved frantically at the sergeant of First Squad, caught his attention, mimed popping a smoke grenade. The sergeant nodded, then did the same with Second. Folke eased the lasrifle over the dead man's arm, looked for the tell-tale window or sandbag on a roof indicating a sniper's preferred perch. The village, he knew from the dataslate maps, was laid out in a square grid, with the road they were on coming from the east, while the grand house was in the center of town, across the square from the local shrine. Navy scans had indicated the presence of civilians still in the town, and a traitor weapons cache in the big house. There was another pulse rifle shot, then the deep chatter of two of the platoon's m/56 heavy stubbers answered it, shredding the wall around the window where the sniper had been spotted.

There was a soft, muffled _koff_ as the smoke grenades across their route of advance went off. Someone had thoughtfully tossed one ahead of Folke, and so he pushed himself to his feet. He let off one shot at the sniper's building, then it was too obscured by smoke, so he began the rush forward.

He rejoined his men in that mad rush, where Second Platoon of First Company dashed themselves against the brick-and-stone construction of Beecher's Grove. Tau pulse rifles, dumped by Tau merchants at the orders of their political masters for the traitor planetary defence forces, hurt the assault badly.

They made it across the open ground around the village and to the ditch that ran around it, collecting and then carrying the Grove's waste to whatever passed for their sewage system. Folke dove into the rockcrete lined ditch with a foul-smelling splash, came up, propped his lasrifle in a scrape, and strained his eyes to see through the shreds of smoke and into the darkness of the village's windows.

Grimacing, Folke racked his brain for what to do next. They were pinned, the mortar team had fallen silent (the enemy aided by the greater range of the xeno pulse rifles,) and the rest of their battalion was occupied with their own small villages to capture, while the other battalion was busy maneuvering around an enemy fortress several miles away. He reached a hand up to the aquila and leaf around his neck, clutched them through the material of his gray tunic. He slithered back down below the crest of the rock-crete lined ditch, propped his lasrifle against the 'crete, and withdrew the dataslate from the pouch on his combat webbing.

He activated it with the appropriate prayers to the machine spirit and ritual, and the white words on black background came up as usual. With a muttered prayer of thanks to the machine-spirit, he pulled up the map of the village, zoomed in on where they were. The Navy's _Dauntles_ s-class light cruiser in orbit, the _Dunedin_ , had taken up station over this portion of the planet and was constantly updating the maps of the Guard with real-time, high-powered transmissions. There had been a lecture on it on the troopship, but Folke hadn't been paying attention, so as far as he knew, it was simply techmagic the warships were using.

The _Dunedin_ 's auspexes were taking thermal images, due to the cloud cover, and so Folke saw himself and his own men as bright-white against the cold black of the ground and buildings. He ignored the big house in the central village square, instead comparing the map to what stood in front of him. Overhead, a flight of Avenger Strike Fighters shrieked by, heading for some target too far for the Basilisks of the 145th to hit. They appeared as motionless dots briefly on the map, and then were gone as fast as they had shown up as soon as it updated.

"So it's not _truly_ real-time," Folke muttered. Several heat signatures in one of the houses near them looked like they made up a heavy stubber nest. It hadn't yet shot at them, and so the suspicious part of his mind suspected that they were waiting for a final advance from him to the walls of the village's buildings proper before shredding his men. "Aye, then. Grenadiers!" They kept their heads ducked as they made their way to him, the five men with grenade launchers instead of lasrifles, one from each squad. "I'm going to order a volley of covering fire for you," he told them. "Then you're going to shoot the shit out of the building I indicate on the map, here." He showed it to them, the home over what he thought was a shop that was barring their advance.

 _The goal is to retake the planet for Imperial rule. If the locals haven't risen to support us in that, then they're traitors,_ Colonel Vasa had said before the regiment left the troopship. "Who got hit?" Folke asked, and the litany of men reported left him scowling. He'd lost eleven men since passing the mortar pit, because Tau pulse rifles meant they were dead. They weren't all from the same squad, which would have left him an entire squad short, but…

 _Langley, this isn't how this was supposed to go. Throne damn it!_ He stood, because the Imperial Infantry Officer's Guiding Primer said that all infantry officers needed to lead from the front and show their men that they were always willing to go first, and Folke was nothing if not willing to lead his men from the front. "Covering fire in volleys! First Squad, fire!" He called the last word at a roar, and then indicated their target by shooting at the shadowy shapes in the window.

The lasrifle shots started pouring out, bright red against the dour brown of the brick-and-wood construction of Beecher's Grove. Each squad stood and fired in turn, then ducked back into cover. Folke stayed standing, because bayonet leaders led from the front, and the best of leaders were bayonet leaders. The grenadiers waited for six volleys, enough time for the enemy fire to be drawn to Folke himself, who wished he cut a more imposing figure than a man half-drenched in sewage, and then they stood. Their grenades were on target with the krump and then explosions of impact, cracking the building open like Folke had cracked the skull of Karl the law officer in Stockarta against the 'crete of the alley. He bared his teeth in defiance.

The wall fell inwards, crushing whoever was unlucky enough to have survived the initial explosions. Then things were completely booked when the grenadier to Folke's left fell forwards without a head. "Hit the dirt!" He roared in Skanian, and tackled the grenadier to his right. _Damn it, the forest was supposed to be clear!_ He gave half a thought to blaming the mechanized infantry that had marked the village as an enemy strongpoint that needed taking before bypassing it on their Thunder Run to the former Imperial capital of Palaptinate.

 _Fuck it,_ he decided. He activated the platoon-wide micro combead link. "Squads One and Three! Cover the rear! Stubber gunners from Squads Two and Four stay here and cover us. The rest of Two and Four, with me. Grenadiers, give me another volley on my mark." The Skanian 312th were _light infantry_ ¸ and they should never have been assaulting a fortified enemy point, even if it was 'just' a village. They should have been maneuvering around the flanks of the enemy, hitting them from the side and then fading back into the tree line, turning the enemy line.

Folke wanted to curse the Guard for sending him here, but he was the one that had taken the Emperor's _cronr_ in exchange for a ticket off-planet and immunity from the local law patrolmen for himself and Elise. He checked that the men's bayonets were fixed, and then slotted the dead grenadier's bayonet onto his rifle. "The plan," he told the platoon over the commnet, "is that Squads Two and Four are going to follow me into the village, under cover from the stubbers. Grenadiers, you launch smoke grenades, and then we'll clear the village. We'll proceed to cover Squads One and Three, grenadiers, and stubber gunners while they pull back to the village. Vox operator!" He bellowed the last words, and the boy of sixteen standard years came running, head held lower than necessary.

"Contact Company, tell them we need assistance, get one of the sergeants to help you with our location. The Emperor protects," Folke finished. This would be it for him, then. The xeno-loving traitors probably knew he was the officer and would be gunning for him. The thought of going across another stretch of open ground, open to fire from both front and rear, from an enemy with Tau pulse rifles-well, his will was current and with the regimental clerks. All his backpay and worldly possessions went to Elise, and she was under firm orders to find a nice officer to ingratiate herself with, even if he wasn't a Skanian.

It was a good death, Folke decided. Rifle in hand, leading his men in the Emperor's name against enemies of the Golden Throne. Still, he felt a bitter pang of regret that he wouldn't survive to put the fear of Ollanius Pius in whatever scum thought they were worthy of Elise. He signaled the grenadiers, and they launched their volley of smoke grenades.

"Come on then, you sinners," he roared, and scrambled to stand on the lip of the ditch. "Fifteen thousand years from now, when the Imperium is at peace and our descendants celebrate this regiment's Founding because we celebrated it, the standard will have _this_ as a battle honor on the flag next to the Aquila! Our finest hours are yet ahead of us, and the city of Palaptinate cries out for liberation from the xeno-loving traitors! _Deus Imperator Vult!_ "

They roared their approval at him, his men. Arne, the huge Corporal from Squad Four that liked kittens, and Jan, the small, wiry marksman from Two who hated the law patrol officials from Skania with a passion that belied his ability to pick the wings off a bird at a thousand meters with the iron sights on the standard issue lasrifle. Tanel, the best scrumball player of them all. They roared their defiance in the face of being outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and outgunned. Folke felt a fierce swell of pride in his breast, and he grinned like one of the feral, hungry dogs that prowled the lower levels of Stockarta.

They went over the top of the ditch at a run, the heavy stubbers working over-time to keep the heads of the enemy behind cover. He heard a strangled scream from ahead, suddenly cut off by the report of a pulse rifle, and he felt a sort of grim exultation at the fact they were shooting their own wounded. _Thus to heretics, traitors, and xeno-lovers. The Emperor and Langley protect!_ No shots rang out in their direction, and the two squads and Folke hit the wall of the first home above a shop with their shoulders. Squad Four covered their backs while Two and Folke went around the corner, rifles held tight against their shoulders. No pulse rifles sounded their death knell, so Two stacked up against either side of the door in the right side-wall of the building.

The narrow alley drew tight on him, but Folke knew that was simply because he hadn't been in as enclosed a space surrounded by so many men in a while, since the troopship two weeks ago. He took a breath, and then shot the door off its hinges. He went in through the door before the noise of his rifle had stopped echoing. He knocked it askew with his shoulder, where it hung from the bottom hinge loosely. The platoon's heavy stubbers still roared their disapproval of such xeno-loving traitors outside from the ditch. Keeping his body turned to the side, to present a thinner target, Folke cleared the first room. It was a bakery. He checked behind the icebox and the fire-brick oven, nothing.

The first room was empty of any enemy activity, save for a helmet tossed haphazardly on the display counter at the front of the store. Folke activated the microbead comm's platoon-wide net, reaching every one of his remaining soldiers. "Squads One and Three and attached stubber gunners, come up to the building. Squad Four will cover you while Two and I clear the top floors, over." He was greeted by the simple affirmative click from each Sergeant, four in total. Squad Two followed behind him as he went up the two-person wide stairs, spaced appropriately so as to not all die to a well-placed grenade.

There was no such grenade, and so the door at the top of the stairs stayed closed. _If they're only enemies, then the Emperor will forgive me for this._ He thought he felt the small symbols of his religion hanging from around his neck tingle, but he ignored it. Folke switched the fire selectors on his lasrifle to auto and full power shots. He stood back from the door, and then began pumping shots through it, vaporizing the door wherever he shot. Finally, the spent battery pack ejected from the top with a loud _ping._ The Corporal behind him passed Folke a new one, and he jammed it into the top of his lasrifle while the Sergeant covered the door for him.

The bolt _snicked_ into place correctly, shoving the battery pack into contact with the circuitry connecting it to the focusing chamber in the rifle's receiver, and the soft whine of the rifle being ready to fire reached his ears. He kicked the door's remnants in after blowing the hinges once more and went in. He saw two bodies on the carpeted flooring, blood soaking into the floor from where slivers of wood had entered their necks and faces. There was a third body slumped against the wall, a fourth hung over the heavy stubber facing out a window with a perfect kill-zone for a unit coming out of the trees, across from the door. A fifth and sixth were lying, gasping, against each other and the wall to Folke's right. One wore a peaked cap like the kind preferred by higher-ranking officers and Commissars, and he tried to bring a pulse pistol to bear against Folke.

Folke kicked it out of the man's hand, then put a boot into his stomach, where the man was holding what was probably a ricochet wound. "Vox operator!" He called. Erikr Johansen came up, looking pale and drawn beneath his shock of red hair. _He's sixteen, not twenty-two and a killer_ , Folke reminded himself. "Can you get in contact with regimental HQ and ask what we're supposed to do with political officers?" Johansen nodded, and Folke turned back to Peaked Cap.

"You are a political officer, _inte sant_?" The man spat at Folke, his face twisted with rage and hate. The blood-laden spittle flecked on Folke's boot, and Folke grinned, then kicked the man in the teeth. "You misunderstand me, comrade Political Officer. _I'm_ the one in charge here." Folke squatted on his heels before the man. He placed the buttstock of his rifle against the floor very gently.

"This can go two ways, Political Officer," Folke said. "I can keep kicking you while you're down, or I can get the medic in to look at you. The medic only happens if you tell me what I need to know, though." Peaked Cap merely spat again.

" _Sioyoxo_ Illani Culhun, 99773-450." Folke scowled, tapped the butt of his rifle against the floor. The man repeated it, and so Folke turned away once more, and nodded to Jan. Fanatics unwilling to give anything up would go to the grave with a smile on their lips and thoughts of glory in their brains. But part of being a decent leader, Folke had learned, was knowing when to take a walk. So he left Jan to his task and went back down the stairs. Erikr Johansen went with him, nodding along to something coming over the vox handset held to his ear.

Back down the stairs, Folke found a piece of bread that hadn't been snatched up by the village inhabitants, its defenders, or any of his men that came in with him, and he set his mind to the task of clearing the village while defending from the force outside still. Squads One and Three had taken it upon themselves to clear the buildings next to the one he was occupying with Two and Four, which would serve as a decent base of sorts to finish the enemy force still inside Beecher's Grove.

The door they'd come in through was some sort of side door, perhaps for necessary restocking of the vital things the bakery needed to operate. The alley had enough cover to make it to the wall of the next building, but Folke didn't want to leave his men vulnerable to sniper fire. _Throne-damned snipers_. They had their uses, and Folke liked his own marksman decently enough, but he preferred it if enemy snipers were operating _far_ from him.

"Axelsen!" The Sergeant of Squad Two sauntered up, lasrifle dangling by the sling around Axelsen's shoulders. The older man had in front of him a boy of about fourteen, who grinned up at Folke from beneath a mop of blond hair held carefully in check by a cap that ran roughly along Guard lines. Folke looked from the boy to Axelsen.

"Squad One found this one hiding in a closet next door while you were _chatting_ with the political officer upstairs, sir," Axelsen threw Folke a casual salute, which he returned. Folke cocked an eyebrow, and Axelsen smiled. "He doesn't speak Low Gothic. 'leastwise, not our version of it. Little bugger sure as Throne recognizes 'Aquila' and 'Emperor,' though." Upon Axelsen mentioning the Aquila and the Emperor, the boy made the sign of the aquila over his chest, and repeated what Folke thought was supposed to be 'God-Emperor.'

"Okay, okay," Folke told the boy. "Don't get your knickers in a twist, praise the Emperor and strike down his foes." Folke made the sign of the aquila back at the boy, who grinned even wider, if such a thing were possible. One of the men from Squad Two handed the lad a ration pack, probably to keep him out of their hair while they conducted the business of vanquishing the Emperor's foes.

Folke was about to bite into the bread he'd snagged when Johansen tapped him on the shoulder, gripping his gray field cap like he wanted to choke it.

"S-sir," Johansen started. "I couldn't get in contact with battalion HQ, but I managed to get Company. They've engaged their objective and expect to be finished soon, Emperor willing."

"Praise Him," Folke responded automatically. A rote response, even though Folke considered himself devout, it also served to buy him time to think about whether or not he'd be better off trying to offer the enemy terms for the village. His orders were capture it and eliminate the foemen. If he could capture the village without having to expend his men's lives in a costly and drawn out engagement, it'd be eminently preferable.

"Okay," he said. "Theodorus!" Folke called, and the Platoon Sergeant popped his head around the door in the stairwell. "Keep the political officer up there, but get the other injured ones down here for the medic to look at." Theo called an affirmative response, and Folke stood to the side as two men from Squad Four carried the last survivor down the stairs. He looked at Folke, and Folke tried not to read anything into the look the man gave Folke. Behind them came another squaddie from Four with the heavy stubber from upstairs, to check that it was clean, serviceable, and to put it to use for the platoon.

Thinking of Elise, how she was learning to smile again, and how much farther he was willing to go to protect her, Folke pulled a pack of lho sticks and lighter from his tunic's breast pocket, and headed back up the stairs. The political officer still lay slumped against the wall, so Folke helped him stand and hobble over to the now empty heavy stubber mount.

The man stood leaning heavily one hand, and so Folke offered him the lho pack. He nodded and took one, so Folke handed it to him and lit it for him. Peaked Cap had gratitude in his eyes at the gesture the lho-stick seemed. Folke respected him for his courage in defying 'enhanced interrogation,' even if it had been as brief as it had, and so Folke would grant him a soldier's death. The political officer turned to look out the window at the sun burning off the morning mist, and half-way through his first puff, Folke shot him in the back of the head.

The political officer fell sideways, sprawling across the mount, and Folke holstered his still-smoking laspistol. He took a half-step forward and pulled the still gently burning lho-stick from the man's mouth, crumpling it in his hand. He stood and looked at the body for a moment, and then spoke quietly. "In the name of the Immortal-God Emperor on His Golden Throne upon Holy Terra, I, Lieutenant Alexander Folke of His Majesty's Imperial Guard sentence you to die, in accordance with His Immortal Will and Field Order Number 98-7234. May His Will be done."

In the khaki drab of the Corcusani Planetary Defense Forces, Folke felt that the man could have come from a brother Guard regiment. _Hell_ , he thought, _it could have been us if our governor wasn't loyal_. The death of Vidkunsen still weighed on his conscience, even as deserved as it was, and Folke knew he could discuss the death of the political officer, even mandated as it was by the Field Order, with the Commissar or Chaplain, but Vidkunsen would stay safely locked in his memory for the rest of his life.

"Alright, but it's for Elise. It's all for Elise." Folke told himself. "Now enough Emperor-damned moping, Folke, you've got a job to do." He turned his back on the body and went down the stairs once more, filled with a restored sense of determination. When he made it down, he saw Axelsen teaching the boy how to play Emperor's Tarot, Theodorus filling his canteen from the water tap in a corner, and Johansen thumbing through a well-worn copy of the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer.

"Theo." The man turned at Folke's voice, then nodded once. "Get a piece of white cloth, get it attached to somebody's rifle. We're going to offer them terms." The Platoon Sergeant snorted once, then saw Folke was deadly serious and caught himself before he went into laughter.

"By the Emperor," Axelsen said. "I'm pretty sure they outnumber us, boss," he continued. Folke nodded, then pulled out the dataslate from its pouch in his webbing. He skipped the ritual of activation, merely offering the machine spirit a prayer, but it seemed to suffice, for the thing turned on. He went back to the map, turned it to show Axelsen.

"We're _here_ ," Folke pointed to the three buildings that Second Platoon occupied. He drew a semi-circle with his finger outside the village, where they'd come from and where there hadn't supposed to have been any enemy contact. "They've got, or so the Navy says, a company in the trees. The rest of First Company is _here_ ," this time the finger jabbed three miles away. "Navy's maps say that there was a concentration of enemy force in company level there, so that's what the rest of the Company is doing. Johansen, tell 'em what you told me on our way to this place."

The vox operator chimed in at Folke's word, suitably encouraged by both Folke's lack of reaction from shooting an unarmed man and a chance to be in the spot light. "Captain Scylfr said that they were mopping up the last resistance at the farm and house and expected to be here in three hours, an hour ago."

"So we've got two hours to fortify our position and take the village, by force or by guile. The enemy doesn't know that our only reinforcements, the rest of the company, are two hours away. For all they know or think, we're the advance scouts for a regiment or even a division." Folke smiled at Johansen and Theo and Axelsen. "I'll go out under a flag of truce and request an hour to retrieve and bury our dead, and to return theirs to them. That'll get us halfway to the company arriving."

"What happens if the Chaplain doesn't think that negotiating with traitors is acceptable and shoots you, or worse, reports you to the Battalion Commissar?" That question came from Theodorus, and it seemed to Folke to imply a sort of amusement at Skanian regiments having Chaplains at the company level.

Folke thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Then I will accept the Chaplain or Commissar's judgement as necessary, for they are the Emperor's instruments, while I am only His servant. I appreciate the concern, but we have a village to take, gentlemen. I want all squads covering me while I go out under the truce-flag and once I secure it, Squad Two will go out and recover our dead while the rest fortify and prepare to hold, and the Emperor will protect." he finished. They responded with the appropriate rejoinder, and Folke grinned, then bit into the bread.


	3. A Memory

**+++A memory, two years ago+++**

Alexander Folke was just sitting down to dinner in the small, three room apartment he shared with his sister and their mother in Hablock 11276 the Ironworker's Section of Stockarta Hive, when his sister came through the door. Even though he'd been working for a year in the same forge his father Tyr had worked in before his untimely death, Alex still hadn't developed the hugely muscled arms and strong, broad back of his father. Granted, Alex thought ruefully, _Pappa_ had spent thirty years on the forge floor from the time he turned sixteen, turning raw ore into huge slabs of iron for transshipment to the closest _proper_ Forge World. The iron forges of Skania were fed by the huge forests that called the planet home, tended by various clannish tribes that made their homes deep inside the hills and valleys, and Alex took a quiet pride in knowing that he helped fuel the Imperium's vast warmachine as it defended the worlds of humanity.

"How was the Ironworker's local meeting?" _Mamma_ had always liked to hear about his and Elise's days, ever since he could remember attending the rudimentary grade schools paid for and provided by the dues paid to the Local. Dinner appeared to be a standard grain ration, supplemented with a little bit of bacon, likely earned by Mamma sewing a neighbor's torn shirt or trousers. A skill she had learned as a young girl on her family's stead, that and cooking were something that their mother put to good use to help support the family.

"Not bad," he said, and sniffed at the bacon. There were seven slices on the table, with three on the plate placed for him and two on the plates for _Mamma_ and Elise. While _Mamma_ glanced at the apartment door to see if Elise was back yet, he placed the third piece of bacon onto Elise's plate. "We talked about the regiments being Founded for offworld service with the Guard." He took a sip of the tea.

"You're not thinking of going, are you?" Alex shook his head, then took another sip of tea. "Well, good," _Mamma_ said. Alex thought that he would have liked to have enlisted and done his part for the Imperium and Emperor, but he was almost at the point where he would make line supervisor. He had a couple of ideas that might help improve safety numbers for the factory, and improved safety numbers meant more Ironworkers going home to their families at the end of the month, which meant more metal for the Imperium's war machine.

"Scrumball's going fine," he said, before _Mamma_ could start questioning him about that. "We've raised enough money to pay the memorial costs for Torstigg's cousin, and we'll be hosting it at the arena."

"Were you friends with him?" Alex shrugged, but was interrupted by the door opening before he could say anything. Hoping it was Elise, he turned to look.

She came through the door to the rest of the tenement slowly, pale as a ghost, and silent as the grave. Alex shot to his feet, knocking the lovingly carved chair he'd been sitting in over to the floor. It clattered once, and Alex felt his heart stop. Her dress was tattered and torn, held up by one of her hands, and her face was covered in blood.

" _No_ ," he snarled. He gripped the edge of the table, and _Mamma_ stood up slowly, hands shaking. She went to Elise while Alex stood there and watched, and it was _Mamma_ that guided her gently to the small bathroom that they shared, where Elise and Alex had liked to watch _Pappa_ shave. The light in the bathroom turned on, flickered once, twice, and Alex smelled the sugarloaf in the oven burning. He thought that he should get it out, perhaps salvage the middle, but all he could do was stand there in the kitchen-dining room, one hand gripping the edge of the table like he was an old man and needed the support it offered.

Finally, finally, he came to his senses. _Mamma_ would find out what had happened. And then Alex would do what Folke men had been doing best for hundreds of years. He would solve the problem.

If it was just a group of toughs from another Hab Block, maybe some rich-kids looking to slum it and all they'd done was harass his sister, well, Alex was still _kompis_ with his scrumball pals from secondary school, they met up for pints at The Standing Boar every Marketday.

If it had been something infinitesimally worse, then Alex was a decent hand at knife-fighting in the close confines of a hive's alley, and an even better one at brawls, thanks to scrumball taking up three of his evenings every week. So Alex stopped standing and went to the oven, where he pulled out the sugarloaf that _Mamma_ had saved their sugar rations for a month for, and upended it onto a loaf platter. He carved, very carefully, with as much care as he might very carefully finish a piece of art he was making for Elise or _Mamma,_ the burned pieces off. He heard the water of the shower turn off-had it turned on? He hadn't even noticed. He turned, stuck a darker piece in his mouth, burned his tongue, and watched his mother take Elise to the small bedroom that he and Elise had once shared.

"You are the man of the house now," _Mamma_ had told him when _Pappa_ had died, "and so the man of the house gets the master of the home's bedroom." He hadn't wanted it, not really, but _Mamma_ was from one of the distant rural-district tribes or clans, where they did things differently, and Alex hadn't wanted to argue with her. So he slept in his parents' old bed, made obeisance every morning and evening to the shrine of the Emperor and the Blessed Saint Langley in the main living area, and went to work at the iron foundry his father had worked in. The foreman had wanted to give Alex his father's position, that of line supervisor, but he couldn't, not until Alex had a couple years of decent line experience under his belt.

Bitterly, a small part of Alex wondered if he'd finish those two years now, or if he might not be finishing his life quite sooner than that. He dry swallowed, and went to rummage in the 'fridge unit for a beer. All they had was mead, sent from one of _Mamma_ 's brothers, so he poured a glass of that and drank it in one go. He placed the bottle back in the 'fridge unit, and listened for a moment. There was no sound coming from the smaller bedroom, so he went into the master bedroom and pulled from below the pillow on the bed the long dagger that marked him as a man of Skania and a member of a tradesmen's Local.

He drew it from the plain brown leather covered metal sheath, then shoved the sheath through his belt. He poked his thumb with the point, decided that it was sharp enough for his business tonight, and rammed it back home into the sheath. He took one last look around the bedroom, hoped Elise and _Mamma_ would be able to keep it, and rolled his sleeves up. There were light patches on his arms without his dark hair, where he'd been burned by splashing sparks over the past year and a half. If _Mamma_ had a name, then Alex would know who to go to and find out where they were at this time of night.

He stepped out of the room gently, and closed the door without making a sound. He looked up to see his mother standing there, watching him. Her eyes took in the dagger, and then the set of his shoulders and the forced calmness of his face.

"You're going to do something stupid, aren't you?" He nodded, and she sighed. "You always got that from my side of the family. My brothers were always slow to anger, but when they did, it would burn and burn until they were burned out with it, or whatever had happened had been made right, whether by fist or by a house-burning." She stepped close to embrace him and he stooped so that she could. Mamma wrapped her arms around him, dagger and all. She pressed a kiss against his forehead, and then whispered the name of the man that'd taken Elise into his ear.

His fist tightened, and Folke nodded, then pressed a kiss of his own against her forehead. "I probably won't be back," he said. "But if I am, it won't be for long. Maybe only to pack a set of clothing. It'd be best if you went back to your family." Mamma gave him a sad smile, but nodded her agreement.

"Be safe, Alex," she said, and then she went back into the smaller bedroom. He walked out the door without a glance behind, hardening his heart for what was to come.

Midnight found Folke waiting at Kjell's, a bar that his target frequented after his patrol shifts with his partner. Folke was nursing an _akvavit_ , distilled grain liquor, doing his best not to look particularly brooding. Instead, he thought about what he would do after he put his target down. With his badge protecting him, with a reputation for peddling girls and drugs on the side, Folke knew even if the other law officials didn't come after him, his target's friends on the wrong side of the law would.

That was a battle he was willing to fight. He'd never knifed a man in cold blood, but Folke was absolutely certain he could handle a fistfight. Scrumball and his job at the iron foundry served him well. He might not be the tallest man or the strongest, but he could punch well above his weight, and take a hit, too. He finished the _akvavit_ , then gestured for another. The tasteless liquor burned going down, but Folke didn't care. The dagger, gifted to him by his father on the day Folke had become a man, was hidden beneath his pantsleg, trapped between the barstool and leg.

His target came in the bar's door with a gust of laughter, and Folke's eyes narrowed. He smiled into his drink, slugging it back in one go. In the blue tunic and gray pants of the Stockarta Hive Law Enforcement Patrol, his target cut a dashing figure, and Folke wondered if the man had charmed his sister before forcing her or just pulled her aside from her business and then done it.

It doesn't matter, Folke told himself. What matters is that you're going to gut him. His target took a corner booth, and Folke switched from _akvavit_ to a sweet cider made from a planetary fruit. In the dim mirror behind the wood bar, Folke watched a woman sway and gyrate in time to the music on a stage in the middle of the room, and watched his target watch her.

It took four ciders, an uncomfortable bladder, nine songs, and two changes in girls on stage before his target got up to go to the restroom. Folke finished his cider, left enough hard coin on the bar to pay his tab plus a tip, and stood. He took a bit slower walking to the restroom than he otherwise might have, and gave his eyes time to adjust to the harsh light in the bathroom. Folke saw his target's shoes in a stall, and heard a flush. He walked past the line of urinals and stalls to the emergency exit door. He lifted the locking bar and turned, readying a blow.  
"What the fu-" the man started, and then Folke slammed the bar into the man's head, sending him reeling. He tossed the locking bar aside, where it clattered against the line of sinks.

"This is for my sister, you piece of trash," Folke said, and drove his knee into the man's groin. His target wasn't a patrol officer for nothing, though, and responded by sending his forearm across Folke's face. Folke was thrown against the line of sinks, but came back up swinging.

"What sister," the target sneered, and Folke growled. He dove into a tackle, leading with his left shoulder, and drove the man back against a stall wall. The man went back, and then brought his clenched fists down against Folke's back.

"You know," Folke panted, his heart racing and blood pounding in his ears. "Elise Folke. Dark hair, about sixteen," he said. "I'm going to fucking gut you." He scrambled to his feet, backed up from his target.

"Her? I remember her. By the end she was moaning for me, like the little whore she is," the target sneered, and Folke merely drew his dagger in response. The man's eyes widened, and he went for his standard issue side-arm, but it wasn't there. It was across the room, against the wall where the door to the rest of the bar stood, where Folke had tossed it while the man had been hammering at his back. Folke grinned, because he was between the man and his laspistol.

"Not so tough without that, are you now, Vidkunsen?" Folke took a step forward, the man took a step back, and the song changed. They closed once more, this time for the last time, and Folke used his greater strength to drive Vidkunsen out through the emergency exit, sending an alarm ringing through the bar. They emerged into the neon-lit rain coming down hard through the random openings of the Stockarta sky-line. Folke drove his dagger through Vidkunsen's flak vest, and then again. Vidkunsen snarled and managed to get a hand on his baton as they fell, which he brought around against Folke's face, across one eye and breaking his nose. Folke jerked his dagger free and then stabbed it down again, this time getting a glancing blow in the chest, where it bounced off a rib. Vidkunsen flopped once, and then Folke seized his head and drove it against the rock-crete, and then again and again and again.

Folke panted the whole while, and he didn't stop until Vidkunsen's skull was soft and pulpy and leaking matter beneath them both. Folke rolled over and puked, then tugged his dagger free. He spat to clear the taste of vomit from his mouth, then cleaned the dagger on Vidkunsen's tunic. He turned, startled, when a voice broke the sounds of his panting and rain and the alarm in the bar.

"There's a place for men that can fight like you," it said. It was clearly educated, bearing the tell-tale signs of an upper-class accent. The figure that had spoken wore a peaked cap and long greatcoat, with a sheathed sword at one hip. The greatcoat was tucked behind the laspistol holster and sword, and Folke felt a quickening of fear. This was an Imperial Guard officer, then, come to dispense the Emperor's vengeance. Folke rose to his feet with as much dignity as he could muster, because he would rather die on his feet like a man than kneeling like a beast.

"I heard everything," the officer said. He paced forward, one hand propped on the hilt of his sword. "As I say. There is a place for men like you," he continued. Folke rubbed his face clear of rain and blood with his arm, staining the material of his shirt. "Come with me to the Guard," he said, "and the Emperor will forgive you all your sins. Enlist in the Guard, and I can make this," here the officer tilted his head at the slowly cooling corpse of Vidkunsen, "disappear."

Folke glanced at the officer, then at the body. He could probably hide Vidkunsen's corpse himself, with help from his scrumball friends, but there would always be the niggling doubt that they would betray him to Vidkunsen's associates. He jammed his dagger back home into its sheath, and watched as the figure took another step closer. Now Folke could see the color of his eyes, and the man's tawny eyes examined Folke with the patience of a night-hunting bird.

And then the man said what would seal Folke's fate. "You can bring your sister and keep her safe," he told Folke, and Folke knew he would sell his soul to keep her safe.

"Okay," Alex said, and in that moment, he felt like what he really was, a scared seventeen year old that had just killed a law enforcement officer in cold blood.

"Welcome to the Guard, recruit," the officer said, and Alex felt a chill go down his back.


	4. Chapter 3

+++Three+++

Folke stepped out of the bakery building that had become his impromptu office space as confidently as he could fake. He had taken the time to clean the blood from his sword and dagger, inserted fresh powerpacks in his laspistol and the lasrifle he'd grabbed. Johansen carried his lasrifle at 'present arms,' a piece of ground grain sacking tied to the barrel in place of bayonet of an actual scrap of white cloth.

Behind him, his platoon had their lasrifles, grenade launchers, and heavy stubbers bristling from within windows, loopholes, and mouseholes cut into the walls. Forty-odd men lay in wait to protect him if things went down, and in the chill of the weak mid-day winter sun, Folke felt a fierce pulse of pride in his men. He walked the measured pace of a man going to meet his doom, and Johansen matched him for every stride. The road from the bakery's front door led to the central plaza after thirty meters.

Thirty meters in the open, in the center of the road, his officer's gold braid and insignia on his cap and tunic clearly visible to any keen-eyed marksman that looked for a plucky Lieutenant to round out his slain officers for the week. Folke took a breath, then stepped into the central square of the village. He took a look at the Imperial Shrine, where the altars to the Emperor and whatever Saints the locals had venerated would be. Plain wood and stone, it bore an Imperial aquila on the steeple that signaled it was a place of worship to all the locals for miles around. It probably contained the records of deaths, births, marriages, and naming ceremonies, going back centuries. It might even contain a statue of an anonymous Guardsman, in honor of those mustered millennia ago and sent millions of miles away to soldier for the Imperium. And, perhaps if they were lucky, how and when the sons of this place had died in the Emperor's service. Folke turned and made the sign of the Aquila over his chest, head bowed, for a moment. A cough interrupted his moment of reflection, and his hands dropped to sword and laspistol.

From the front entrance of the large manorial house came three people, a woman and two men. They wore the uniforms of the PDF regiments that the Guard normally would have counted as auxiliaries or militia to garrison areas behind the front, with the blue arm-band denoting Tau allegiance. Folke's eyes spotted the officer insignia of a Major and two Captains, and he smiled. They bore no flag of truce, but he could see the pulse and las-rifles, the heavy-stubber barrels sticking out of windows and whatever loop and mouseholes their infantry had carved out of the marble of the house, probably with nothing more than muscle and pickaxes.

In deference to the Aquila that always watched, to the courtesies of military protocol, Folke saluted. The Major's eyes widened, but he returned it on auto-pilot. Folke dropped it, then gestured at the village.

"A lovely place," he said. "Lovely farm land, lovely forests off in the distance, not too close to the planetary capital. Why, I bet even the girls are lovely."

"Now listen here, you jumped up foreign piece of Imperial scu-" the Captain that had started in on Folke was silenced by a swift elbow to the ribs from the female Captain, and Folke nodded his gratitude.

"I am a servant of His Imperial Majesty, the God-Emperor of Man on His Golden Throne upon Holy Terra," Folke said. "Negotiations don't usually feature as a part of an Imperial Guard officer's day. However," and here Folke held up a hand. "I am Lieutenant Alexander Folke, His Imperial Majesty's 312th Skanian Regiment of Light Foot. I would like to discuss a ceasefire to last no more than two hours while we gather our dead and prepare them for funerary rites."

"Major Nezda Losmian," the Major started. There was a scar across his throat that affected his speech, and so his voice was high-pitched and effeminate, but Folke knew looks and sounds could be deceiving. "176th Corcusani Planetary Defense Legion. These are my Captains, Peri Luwden and Matthias Paldir." At their leader's introduction, each nodded their heads. Behind them, Folke watched a heavy stubber set up on a staircase in the entrance hall of the manorial house track his movements.

"In the interest of full disclosure," Folke said, "I have been ordered to capture and secure the town. As you know, the Guard is advancing. However, my regiment is prepared to level this town the very earth if enough resistance is encountered." A lie. Folke's regiment was prepared to do no such thing, and he was gambling that they wouldn't know that. He watched the heavy stubber check gunner that her ammo belt was secure while she tracked Folke with her eyes. He ignored her, and ignored the two Imperial Navy fighters that shrieked by overhead. The two Captains had stopped watching him and were busy holding a whispered conversation, while Major Losmian merely looked at him.

Off towards the eastern horizon, there was a line of dark clouds moving diagonal to Folke's position. Miles away, the rumble of the artillery guns started again, probably as Guard units encountering resistance requested support to brush them aside. Corcusani was a beautiful world, he thought. Lots of green, with lovely rolling hills for farmland, and decently sized stands of trees. The villages, or at least the one he had seen, were pictesque. Folke took a breath and turned back to the enemy officers. They'd stopped their robust discussion, and were now staring at him.

"I'm sorry," Folke said with a small smile. "I'm from a hive, you see, and this area of your world is beautiful."

The Major smiled. "You should see the mountains, Lieutenant. The Tevisher Range is particularly lovely. I would vacation with my wife and children before the current-hm, unpleasantries. Perhaps if things are resolved you can visit?"

"I'd enjoy that, I think," Folke said. "But to return to the task we must be about, you must lay down your arms and submit to Imperial authority." He spread his hands out wide, to show that his orders were orders and that he'd had nothing to do with the ultimatum that he was now issuing.

The Major reached a hand into his tunic, and Folke tensed. Major Losmian reached his free hand up to put Folke at ease, and withdrew a long, flat box from an inside pocket. "Apologies, Lieutenant. Do you smoke cigarels?" He opened the box and offered a tube of what looked like brown paper rolled in a long, thick tube. It looked like a variant of lho-stick, so Folke nodded and took one. He pulled out his lighter from his tunic's breast pocket, a dull metallic slate gray color, with one side emblazoned with the Skanian planetary coat of arms, two crossed gold swords on a blue shield underneath the watchful aegis of the Imperial Aquila.

He lit it, and then copied what Losmian was doing, which he thought was taking a puff, like on a lho-stick. Instead, he wound up coughing, smoking coming out his nose. "Your first time?" Losmian nodded sympathetically when Folke murmured an affirmative. "The problem, as I see it," Losmian said, "is that the Guard wants this village. We have orders to hold the village. Your regiment has been ordered to level the village if resistance is too strong. Neither of us can simply go around the other. I can't pull back without being shot by a Commissar." Folke didn't say anything at that, but he did smile. "So what I suggest we do is-" Losmian was cut off by a flash of light hitting his throat, and then a puff of superheated flesh and blood boiling off in an explosion as the beam of the lasrifle shot ended.

Folke dodged to the side, knocking Johansen down as he did so. Another shot cracked through the air across his back, searing a burn in the back of his tunic and his back. Gritting his teeth, he forced Johansen's head back down as the man tried to lift it to see what was happening. Folke drew his laspistol, turned on one knee, and put a shot at the window he thought the fire was coming from. A return shot vaporized the dirt between his knee and leg, and he cursed. He fired instinctively, not bothering to aim, as he grabbed Johansen by his gear webbing and dragged him up. Rubbing his ear with his shoulder, Folke activated his platoon-wide combead.

"Kill that Emperor-damned sniper!" A volley of lasrifle and heavy stubber fire was the response. A fourth shot lanced out from the building, smashing the female Captain in the chest, and Folke started pushing Johansen away, for cover. Behind them, Captain Luwden started moaning.

"Please... please Lieutenant..." Her voice was strained, and when Folke glanced back at her, he saw she was trying to cradle guts that had been vaporized by the lasrifle shot back into her stomach. He took pity on her, recited the Oath of Mercy, and shot her. She fell limp, and then the PDF men that had been waiting in the big house to see what happened started firing. At Folke. He swore again, hustled Johansen behind a building. Panting, because getting shot at while trying to shove another man into cover wasn't fun, Folke wished he had brought the lasrifle.

[i]You fight with what you have, recruits, and if all you have are your teeth and fists, then the Emperor expects you to die biting and swinging.[/i] Training Sergeant Veradun had said that on the Founding Field, brought in from a mauled unit of Jantine Patricians to kick the new Founded Skanian regiments into shape before they deployed to a warzone vital to Imperial interests. Folke had his laspistol, his officer's saber, and Johansen. He turned to Johansen.

"You're going to go back to our buildings, and bring up the platoon with you. I don't know if the enemy can crack our communications net, but I don't want to find out. Tell First Sergeant Theodorus to position the heavy stubbers and grenadiers best for an assault on the manor house, with a fireteam to protect them. Repeat my orders back to me!"

Johansen quit shaking when Folke's firm tone of voice got to him, and drew himself up to his full height. "I'm to get back to the platoon, sticking to cover, then lead them up here to you. Comm net might be compromised, and I'm to have Sergeant Theodorus position the grenadiers and stubber teams to support an attack, with a fireteam to cover their backs."

"Well said," Folke told him. He handed Johansen his laspistol and the two extra power packs for it. "Let me borrow your lasrifle." Johansen gave his lasrifle over to Folke. Folke flipped the safety off and toggled the fire selectors to 'single' and 'full.'

"I'll cover you," Folke said. He pulled a smoke grenade off of his webbing, primed it, and then tossed it around the corner where Johansen was going to cross. He popped back out from the corner of the building on his side, sighted at a shadow in a window of the big house, and fired. The blue light of the lasrifle lanced out, hit in the center of the shadow, and it dropped with a strangled scream. Folke ducked back behind the corner of the building, and then a line of heavy stubber shells stitched their way across the dirt where he'd been standing a moment before. A chatter of return fire sounded from back where Folke's platoon was, and he was pleased that they were still doing their best to cover him. A glance showed Johansen was gone, but most of the smoke from the grenade still lingered, so Folke edged his way around that corner, back flat against the wall, rifle aimed at where an enemy might pop his head around the far side of the building.

Folke's back ran up against a wood door, so he turned and put a boot next to the handle. It fell inwards, and he went into the building fast. The room was some kind of workshop or garage, with a four-wheeled vehicle with an empty space in the back of it up on a rack. He checked the vehicle, then the tall cabinets that lined one side of the wall. The vehicle and cabinets were empty, but a thud from upstairs had him swiveling to cover the shadowed doorway. He toggled the fire selector to 'automatic' and shuffled forwards, body held as close to sideways as possible so that he'd present a smaller target. A jab of the bayonet through the arch indicated that no one was waiting on the other side to ambush him, and so Folke went through. He heard the krump of high explosive grenades going off and felt a grim sort of satisfaction.

[i]That'll teach you bastards to hole up in a stone and brick manor house in the center of the damn village.[/i] A whine of static came from his combead, indicated someone was trying to get in contact with him from outside of the max range, and a grin split his face. That meant it was either Company or Battalion, not any of his squads. Folke heard another thump from upstairs, so he advanced. The stairs led up to a darkened room, and another crackle of static from his combead almost deafened Folke. He pulled the damned thing out of his ear, letting it dangle by the wire down his shoulder.

There was no one waiting at the top of the stairs to riddle him with autogun or lasgun fire, and so he stood outside the two doors. He eased up to the first one, and repeated what he'd done on the outside. He placed his boot firmly next to the knob, and then kicked, hard. The door fell inwards, and Folke was through it in a flash, sweeping the room with his lasrifle. From outside the building, he heard the screeching of engines as Imperial Navy fighters soared overhead, escorting bombers as they hammered the capital city's defensive complexes while the massed guns of the Guard spoke the Emperor's wrath.

Folke checked under the bed, in the closet, and found nothing. Nothing out of place save a stuffed animal discarded or left behind in the closet, some sort of four-legged furry creature with big ears. He secured it in his webbing. A tinny voice from his microbead started talking, so Folke placed it back in his ear.

"Company to Second Platoon, over, do you read me? What is your status, Second?" It was Captain Scylfr, suddenly loud in Folke's in ear.

"Aye, sir! Whatever my vox-caster is doing, it's working." Folke responded. "We're currently engaged in the village of Beecher's Grove. We've suffered a few losses, but the last enemy resistance is holed up in the large house in the village center. We're keeping them pinned, but the rest of the company coming in from the flanks or side to take them by surprise would be great," Folke reports.

"Copy, Second," Scylfr responds. "We're on our way." There was a rattle of heavy-stubber fire that ripped through the outside brick wall and the wooden paneling on the walls, and Folke dived back out of the room, landing heavily on his back.

He cursed, and then there was a short, startled scream from inside the second room. It was cut off abruptly, as though by a hand covering a mouth. He stood, and stared at the door for a moment. If he tossed a grenade in, no one would know that they'd been anything other than combatants. On the other hand, he had an Emperor-given duty to restore this world, and its inhabitants, to Imperial rule. [i]Decent[/i] and [i]forthright[/i] and [i]honest[/i] Imperial rule, which from the briefings given before the first regiments took the spaceport in an orbital drop seemed to have been lacking from the Governor.

He put aside the issues of Imperial governance, and Folke got back to his feet. He checked that the bayonet was slotted tightly onto his lasrifle, and then kicked the second door in. The door was blocked from behind, and so his kick jolted him and knocked his cap askew when it did nothing. He picked the short cylinder with a brim up, then shined his cap badge, the diving eagle holding a lightning bolt, wreathed. It reminded him that there was a world worth defending from the Imperium's enemies, that the citizenry of this planet weren't all traitors. He decided to try a different tack, and slung the lasrifle on his back.

"It's okay," he called in the Low Gothic everyone knew. "It's okay," he repeated. "I'm an officer of His Immortal and Imperial Majesty's Guard, and we're here to liberate your world."

There was a muffled whisper from behind the door that he didn't quite catch, and then a voice, saying clearly in Low Gothic, "Go 'way!" There was a muffled sob, and Folke cocked an eyebrow. That was a girl's voice, Folke thought. He checked his watch. It felt like it had been longer than it really had been. He glanced at the door one last time, then turned. [i]If they're going to shoot me, they'd have done it by now,[/i] he told himself.

[i]She sounds scared and probably isn't alone in there. She can't be more than sixteen, seventeen. Aye,[/i] he decided. "All right," he called, still in Low Gothic. "I'm going to go, now. If you want food or shelter, come find the Skanian regiments. We'll take care of you. May the Emperor protect." He finished with the traditional benediction, then made the sign of the aquila. Unslinging the lasrifle from his back, he brought it up to his shoulder, prepared to face the crucible of war once more.

Folke went back down the stairs, cleared the bottom floor once more, and became aware of the continuous whine of lasrifle fire, dueling with the sharper bark of pulse rifles, and the deeper chatter of the heavy stubbers, contesting for supremacy of the village square. He went out the door he came in, still dangling off one hinge, and came face to face with Sergeant Carpelan, the leader of Squad One.

"Lieutenant," Carpelan nodded respectfully. He spoke in the war-cant of Skania, a language that some linguists on their homeworld said was as old as human existence on the planet itself. "Good to see you alive, sir. Johansen came running back about ten minutes ago."

"Good," Folke said. He spoke in the same language, Low Gothic laid aside for the moment. "What're the other three squads doing right now?"

"Assaulting the enemy position from the front, under cover from the stubbers and grenades," Carpelan responded. "Platoon Sergeant Theo thought it'd be a good idea to work in on the flank through the buildings and side alleys. Kai brought an axe he scrounged up from an outbuilding somewhere, for mouse-holing." Mouse-holing was the practice of knocking holes in walls to allow infantry to move through buildings unopposed from enemy fire elsewhere along a street or across a plaza, and was easily one of the most important things for urban combat that the Skanian regiments had learned after their Founding Day, on the Muster Fields before the troop ships arrived to take them to war.

"Good," Folke repeated. He heard three dozen male voices, rough and hoarse after the shouting and din of combat, raised in the Paean to Saint Pius, the patron of the Imperial Guard, Ollanius who stood beside the Emperor against the reviled Horus in his treachery. The voices came from the central square, around the building that Folke had mostly cleared. He left the lasrifle dangling across his chest and rolled his sleeves up, now that the sun had cleared the clouds. Kilometers away, artillery guns did their work. Overhead the Imperial Navy watched, collated data, and sent it to General Beauregard, commander of the Arkhan Corps that Folke's regiment belonged to.

"Let's go win a village. In the name of the Divine Emperor, we will take it!" he told the squad. They grinned in anticipation, and made the sign of the aquila. The courage of his men helped serve to inspire Folke, and so he returned the sign of the Aquila to them. A quote came to mind, from one of the few and excellent Colonel-Commissars: [i]From such heroes was the foundation of the Imperium laid, and with their blood as mortar were the stones of its walls secured.[/i] The Colonel-Commissar had been describing the stand of his regiment against a mob of Orks, but Folke thought it still fit.

Skanian regiments were noted for their discipline and steadfast courage, their willingness to advance under even the most determined of enemy fire. Today would prove their reputation once more. Elsewhere, though the Skanian 312th did not know this, their sister regiments, the 313th through 315th were spearheading the advance through fields, copses of trees, and small towns that served the farms around them. The Skanian 312th and nine other infantry regiments, with dedicated support from an artillery regiment, were the attacking anvil, while the 312th's sister regiments and the armor they were guiding around the enemy's flank would be the hammer that shattered the resistance outside the suburb towns that fed into Palaptinate.

The Imperial Guard was working a double envelopment, and this thrust of it had been entrusted to the Skanians in order to break the enemy defense before the Guard ever approached the capital city. Folke led the squad with him around the side of the building, and, under covering fire from the rest of the platoon, across the open street that would have been a killing ground as they worked to take the village's largest house and what probably served as town hall from the flank. Silence was the key, now, and so Folke gestured to the squad to move fast and quiet. They followed his lead across the cobbled road, bent over double, lasrifles held in one hand as they made their sprints. Folke covered them, standing in the open, lasrifle shouldered and ready to shoot. None of them drew fire as they ran, and so once all twelve men of Squad One were across, he withdrew behind the corner they'd rushed for.

"All right," he said. "We just need to clear this building, then go around the side. Fireteam one, stay here and cover our backs. Two, with me and we'll clear it." Folke led the way, putting his boot to the door, knocking it askew. The kick knocked his sword against his planted leg, rumpling his gold officer's sash. He went through the door, fast and hard, just like in Fundamental training. There was an enemy infantryman with his back turned to Folke, looking out a window. He started to turn to engage Folke, and Folke shot him twice. The man jerked back, slumping over the sill, and his finger tightened on the trigger of the lascarbine he was holding. The lascarbine sprayed into the wood and ruined the wall. Another man came down the stairs in the corner, yelling something in the local dialect of Low Gothic, and Folke shot him, too.

That enemy sprawled backwards, and the man behind him tripped. A lasrifle barrel poked its snout out from over Folke's shoulder and placed a shot in the man's back. "Thanks Sergeant," Folke said. A tap on Folke's shoulder indicated that Carpelan had heard his thanks. They moved into the building at speed, checking corners, clearing closets. It was some kind of townhouse, even with two stories, and empty other than the men they'd shot already. They left two of the better shooters in the squad on the second floor of the house and went back down to the road. Folke scratched at the scar across his face, the remnant of a memory, and handed the lasrifle to Johansen, panting, his face drawn and white.

"A fun little jog, Johansen?"

"Yes sir," he responded. The vox-set had to have been a gleaming target for Coruscani sharpshooters, and that Johansen had made it from Folke to the platoon and then caught up with Folke once more was a stellar indication of Johansen's courage or the Skanian ability to lay covering fire or both.

"Well done." Folke drew his officer's saber, a simple piece of metal with the slightest curve to it and a carved eagle's head for the pommel beneath the simple bar handguard. "Men of Skania!" He turned to face the squad, the men that would be storming the central building with him. "Our regiment has earned glory today. Glory for now and for always. But they will say that it was you, you men who won it with sweat and blood. Our sons will worship as we worship the ancestor spirits of the first Skanians, as we worship the Honored First that marched with Saint Langley to holy war in the Imperator's name. They will know our names forever. For the Imperator!" They made the sign of the aquila, rifles slung across their fronts as they did so.

He was out of smoke grenades, and Carpelan was too. So Folke looked at the squad. "Johansen, Ekberg, Lund. You'll cover us. The rest of you with me. To victory!" The assault group went around the corner at a sprinting crouch, lasrifles held useless while they went. Behind them, Johansen, Ekberg, and Lund started pouring fire into the windows and doorway visible on the large house, white hot shots lancing by overhead. Folke didn't bother to wait for the rest of the group to stack up on the door with him. He slammed it into, shoulder first, sending the door crashing inwards.

A bright blue lascarbine shot hit the wall next to his head, and Folke put a shot with his laspistol through the neck of the man that had bracketed Folke with his fire. Another man came yelling his defiance from a corner, and his struggles were ended by a las-rifle shot through the open door. The group that had followed Folke came in with fixed bayonets, hacking and stabbing at the traitors with the righteous fury of the devout.

There was a roar in his ears, Folke realized, and it was the pounding of his blood. Time seemed to slow as a PDF infantryman came at him with a bayonet fixed on his lascarbine, and Folke saw the anger and fear and hate in the man's green eyes. Folke thrust his sword forward, into the man's chest, where it stuck on a rib. The man stumbled back, then took another step forward before his head was blasted by two different shots. There was the smell of burning meat, and a heady vapor to the room from vaporized infantryman flesh.

Folke jerked his sword out of the man, who fell backwards, and then flopped once as Folke shot him. More bodies pushed into the room, and the roar of lasrifle fire and men fighting and dying with and to cold steel contributed to the din. Folke shook his head, trying to clear his ears, when he heard a voice that he recognized.

"Come on, you apes! The Emperor is watching, and I shan't let him see you shame me! Forward! Cut them down! Cut them down!" There was one man with a voice like that, that called them apes.  
Commissar Geralt Dubreton's voice carried, ringing loud and clear through the din of battle, no doubt thanks to the efforts of the Commissariat schools. The regimental commissar, Folke wondered what he was doing here, when he was supposed to be with the main portion of the battalion, the other seven companies attempting to push through the enemy defenses while the company Folke belonged to mopped up the resistance that had been gone around.

They came through the rear doors and windows of the central square's big house with bayonets flashing in the flickering electric lights of the building. They came through the doors and windows, the Emperor on their lips and the business of killing His foes on their minds. They were the rest of Company I of the 312th, and they had Commissar Dubreton, Captain Scylfr, and Chaplain Viraden leading the way. Commissar Dubreton was a whipcord lean man with hard angles for a face, like something an Imperial Guard recruiting poster would use, and he used a power saber like he'd been born to it, easily hacking apart the enemy as they came.

With the combined strength of the rest of the company hitting them from the rear, Folke's platoon pouring fire in at the front, and Folke's assault group coming in from the side, they crushed the enemy between them. Commissar Dubreton and Captain Scylfr approached Folke, wiping blood from their swords and holstering sidearms. He did the same and saluted them both.  
"Thank you, sirs," he said. "It was tough going there for a moment, but your surprise was as welcome as it was unexpected."

"Well done, Folke," Scylfr said. He was middling height, middling age, and slightly rotund about the waist, the mark of his previous occupation before joining the Guard. Scylfr had been a maystere, the elected officials that headed the rural towns outside of Stockarta Hive or the smaller cities on Skania. "A damned tough fight, looks like, Folke."

"Thank you, sir," he repeated. "May I ask what brings you and the Commissar here so quickly?"

"Orders, Lieutenant," Dubreton said. His voice was a smooth tenor, and Folke imagined that Dubreton had used it to seduce more than one woman in his time. "The regiment, in full strength, is to move to assist elements of a local PDF infantry regiment broadcasting with loyalist IFF codes. They, and elements of the Fourteenth Cecjan Drop Troopers, are pinned in a village that sits astride a bridge that General Beauregard's tacticians have designated as vital to an alternate supply route if we're to continue to prosecute this front of the battle for the planet."

"Do we know what kind of resistance there'll be?" Folke asked, and Dubreton shrugged. The Commissar took off his peaked cap, slicked his hair back with one gloved hand, and then replaced the cap. Like Folke, he had a scar across his face, although Dubreton's ran down his face, across his nose, and to the corner of his mouth, while Folke's was a combination of knife scar and proximity burn from a lasrifle's discharge.

"Whatever resistance there is, it's enough to pin at least an infantry regiment and four companies," Scylfr cut in. With his red hair, he was almost at odds with most of the rural Skanians, men with blue or green eyes and pale, almost colorless hair.

"We'll sweep the bastards aside," Scylfr went on. He gestured with a fist, particularly emphatic. "Sweep 'em aside, I say, and then link with the 79th Merdvenannan Tanks pushing up to support our attack."

"A flank march," the Commissar supplied, when Folke made a noise of polite confusion. "We're going to cross the river on foot at a ford that tac-scans from the Navy have identified, and pin the enemy in place against the river and village that friendly forces are occupying while the armor sweeps up to crush 'em while we clear the town." Folke nodded. "The regiment is half an hour's behind us," Dubreton went on. "First Company, as the light company, is to scout ahead. I trust I need not tell you your business, Captain."

"I say not, Commissar," Scylfr exclaimed. "We'll find the fastest route, don't worry!"

"The Emperor protects the virtuous," Dubreton said. "He protects the virtuous, and we are virtuous, for we seek to restore Civitas Imperialis to this planet, this system, and this sector. The Emperor knows our cause, and as our cause is service in His name, he knows we are righteous. Captain, get this company moving. We have allies to rescue."

"Quite so, Commissar," Scylfr agreed. "Vasa!" The Colonel's son approached, lasrifle slung and lho-stick lit. He had the pale hair and cold blue eyes of his father, but wore the altogether more open and approachable features of his mother, the Colonel's Lady Wife, and he was Scylfr's vox-operator.

"Ja, Captain?"

"You know what to do, soldier. Vox your father, let him know we've cleared the village and are marching to meet him. Folke? I want your lads up front, skirmish and advance order. Commissar, will you lead the company with a marching song?" Dubreton smiled at Scylfr's question while Folke saluted and left the Captain and Commissar there, in the building. He was met outside by Chaplain Viraden, who was making the sign of the aquila over one of Folke's dead. Folke did so as well, then knelt and closed the man's eyes.

"Are we allowed time to perform the proper funerary rites for these soul at final rest, Lieutenant?"

Folke stayed kneeling, and shook his head. "I'm afraid not, [i]prast.[/i] We're to meet the rest of the regiment and rescue a loyalist defense force regiment pinned by the enemy at a bridge the army needs secured."

"Bless you, my son," Viraden said. "The Emperor protects the virtuous. Go forth and bring His wrath to His enemies."


	5. Chapter 4

Ancient autogun fire punched into the tree next to him, spraying Folke with splinters of tree bark and flesh. The small bit of dirt he'd thrown up as cover with his E-tool did nothing to protect his fighting scrape from the splinters coming from beside and behind him. "Throne damned armor," he snarled. The Skanian 312th was pinned in the trees and field behind them, with the river they needed to cross to their front.

He could hear the grumble of the enemy armor over the din of rifle fire and the lapping of the river against its banks. Folke _thought_ it was only a single tank and the other three or four vehicles were just armored personnel carriers or infantry fighting vehicles dug in so that their heavy stubbers or autoguns could do the most damage to his men if they attempted to force the river.

Behind him, he could hear Viraden exhorting the men to fire faster and more accurately in the Emperor's name. The Third and Fourth companies had attempted a bayonet charge across the river, supported by fire from the rest of the regiment, only to be blunted by the entrenched enemy. "Do we have any more smoke grenades?" Scylfr was asking behind him.

"We're out," Folke reported curtly. He poked the barrel of his lasrifle, bayonet fixed, over the almost puny berm he'd thrown up in a scrabble of earth while lying belly down under a fusillade of enemy fire. "And they're really laying it on thick," he continued. "You think they're resupplying down the road we're going to use to resupply up?"

"Probably," Scylfr affirmed. Folke sent a desultory shot at the flash from an autogun's shot and was rewarded with a strangled-sounding scream. The fighting had eased down from a furious exchange of fire and grenades to both sides being content to sit and snipe across the river at the other, with an occasional burst from a heavy stubber or autogun emplacement sending some poor fool reeling back, dead or dying.

"Well, we've got to bloody do something." Scylfr slithered back from behind Folke, still belly down, and a short burst from a stubber stitched its way over both their heads.

"By the Throne, _maystere,_ keep low," Carpelan said from a few meters away. Scylfr breezed aside his concerns with an almost dainty wave of his hand, entirely at odds with the bristling mustache he wore.

From across the river, the low grumble of vehicle engines going from idle to full speed became a roar. "Oh shit," Folke said. "Prepare to resist! For the Sky-Father and the Saint!"

"Easy now," came the reassuring voice of Colonel Vasa over the vox microbead. "Their armor might be getting ready to hammer us or try to turn our flank. Officers, look to your men. Men, look to your officers and sergeants. We serve the Sky-Father with our lives, and we serve His Saint unto death and beyond. Fix bayonets!"

"Fix bayonets," Scylfr repeated, then made the sign of the Aquila. "Throne preserve us," he muttered. Folke agreed. Bayonets against armor, even if it was light half-tracks or troop carriers, was suicide. To his left, five or six hundred meters down the line, he heard the beginnings of the enemy push. Automatic rifle fire and the _krump_ of grenades echoed down the river, and Folke winced. "Stay as you are!" Scylfr roared. "Trust the man next to you, and the men down the line! They'll hold! Faith in the Saint will see us through!"

Firepower, courage, faith in the Emperor and faith in the Guardsman next to him. That was how the Guard won wars. And that was how the Guard would win this war. "Flank companies, concentrate your fire on the tracks and weapons," Vasa ordered over the microbead. "Center companies, prepare to push! They want to flank us, we will hammer their center. Sky-Father, Saint, and Skania, men!"

The regiment responded with the ancient cry that Skanian men had been marching to war with for generations: " _Go pa!"_ First Company, the Light Company, was a flank company. The leftmost company, in this case, but the enemy armor sounded like it was hitting the right flank, held by the Grenadier company.

"Let's go," Scylfr said. "There's no push against us here, so we'll move up beside the center companies. First Company, advance!" The company pushed themselves to their feet or knees, still taking careful, aimed shots. Folke got to his feet with the rest of his men, and left his lasrifle dangling. He drew his sword, and waved it vaguely forward.

The company pushed through where they had been taking shelter, using trees and rocks for cover when they could. Autogun and lasrifle fire picked off one or two here and there, but the chatter of the company's support weapons kept them clear. Folke shouldered his lasrifle, banged a shot off at an enemy poking their head over a log, and then slid down the shallow bank, landing in the river with a splash that got water into the top of his boots and got his ankles wet.

"Forward! _Go pa dom!_ " Someone, some blessed Trooper or Corporal or Sergeant had kept a couple of fragmentation grenades back, for later use, and they did their job, now. They detonated with _krumps_ behind the enemy line, rippling them with shrapnel and concussive force. The company forced itself through the river, and at one point the small river had enough men in it that they halted its passage for a moment. Scylfr was the first man on the opposing shore, even with his gut, and he caught a lasrifle burst in his chest for his troubles.

Folke couldn't see the Lieutenant of the First Platoon, so he turned to the men behind him and encouraged them forwards. "Come on! Scylfr's with the Sky-Father, now, and the Saint and Imperator need to see us avenge him! Cut them down!" Another grenade detonated, this time behind Folke's men, spraying them with water and splinters of rock from the river bed. One man let loose a long spray of automatic fire from his lasrifle into the tree line, and he was rewarded for his efforts by a rebel rifle taking him in the chest. The man fell back, gasping for breath, and Folke leapt up onto the traitor's cover. He thrust through the man's neck with his bayonet, and let go of his lasrifle as the man fell backwards.

Folke jumped down and landed on an enemy, who collapsed under Folke's weight. The Skanian used his superior strength to drive the man's skull into the bloody mud and then drew his laspistol. His aim was jostled, and rather than shooting the traitor bearing down on him with an axe, Folke's shot dropped the man next to him.

A cry came up from behind him. "Tanks! They've got Throne-damned tanks coming at us from up the river! Fall back!"

"No!" Folke roared. "Come on, you bastards! The Imperator and Saint are watching! The Sky-Father demands the blood of traitors!" He drew his dagger and slammed it into the chest of a man trying to grapple the laspistol from him, then shot the man in the stomach. Folke kneed a man in the testicles, shot the man next to him, then cut another's throat. "At them! Come on! _Go pa dom!_ Cut them down!" Someone put a knee or elbow into his kidney and Folke saw his world flash white. He shook his head to try to clear the pain, blinked his eyes, and was rewarded with a boot across his knee. He fell on it with a strangled cry, put his shoulder into a man's back and drove him down. A boot landed on his already hurt kidney and he pissed himself a little.

Folke lost his pistol in the mire of mud and blood. He drove his dirk into the back of the man he'd brought down, tried to force himself up to his feet so he could draw his sword. Someone kicked him in the head and Folke's world went black for a moment. He came to still struggling in the muck and gore, hefted to his feet by the huge Corporal Arne. "On yer feet, sar," he said cheerfully. "We've still got business t' attend t', sar." Folke turned to look and saw a thin line of Skanian grey standing and dying in the river, covering their brothers as they moved to attack the enemy defensive line.

The enemy tanks were low-slung, boxy in appearance, with round turrets and long main guns, and heavy stubbers attached to the commander's hatches. There was a thin smoke screen in front of Folke's men, covering them from being shredded by the main and coaxial guns on the tanks, which were five in number. A roar of flame came from above, with a screech of metal on metal, and five Astartes descended on wings of flame and fire and smoke. They landed on the tanks, which rocked at the weight of the Marines descending on them, clipped their chainswords to their sides, and then ripped up the top hatches on the tanks. They took something from their belts, dropped them in the hatches, and then slammed them closed again.

The Astartes leapt up in another wash of flame and smoke and noise, and left the tanks where they were, attempting to push up the river. Then the tanks _detonated_ simultaneously with a roar of noise and a wave of concussive force that knocked Folke off his feet again. Corporal Arne helped him back up, and the Marines dropped down from the sky once more, landing before Folke. They were _huge._ Folke himself wasn't a small man - at 6'1", he well and away was one of the tallest men in his company. Only a few, like Arne, stood taller than him. But the Astartes before him easily topped Arne by two feet.

Folke knelt reverently, and made the sign of the Aquila with his head bowed. "My lord," he began. "We cannot thank you enough for the ai-" He stopped when he felt a huge hand attach itself gently to his shoulder and lift him up to his feet.

"It is we who honor you, Lieutenant of the Guard. You men are where we cannot always be, and it is who men like you who stand before the horrors of this galaxy with the staunchest of courage and strength. I am Sergeant Ceslaus of the Iron Knights chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, and it was a joy to aid men who fight for the Imperium with such courage. Lasrifles and fragmentation grenades against _tanks?_ Such courage might even be suicidal."

His voice was deep and rich and warm and well educated, and Folke realized with a start that the Marine was _addressing him as an equal._ The Marine took off his helmet. Folke swallowed, stared up at the Astartes' eyes, a warm brown. He swallowed again, tried to find the words that wouldn't make him look a fool. "We did what is necessary, my lord Astartes. The Sky-Father expects every man do his duty, and the Saint rejoices when we do." The Astartes nodded, then glanced at one of his fellows. They were all as tall as Sergeant Ceslaus, but they still wore their helmets.

"You men have a mission, yes?"

"Yes, my lord Astartes." Folke turned, and gestured east, to where they had been heading for the bridge they needed to secure. "We were moving to rescue and assist a local regiment of PDF infantry, with four companies of Cecjan Drop Troopers, who are defending a town with a bridge that General Beauregard views as necessary as a supply route for our advance. We were to ford the river here, where it's shallow, then move to hit the enemy from the rear while the 79th Merdvennan Tank Regiment assaults from our lines."

"A worthy goal, Lieutenant. What is your unit?"

"Second Platoon, First Company, Second Battalion, 312th Skanian Light Foot, _sir!_ " The Astartes nodded.

"Where is your Captain?"

"Dead, sir," Folke said. "He caught a rebel lasrifle in the chest, but he was the first of us across the river."

"He died well, then," Ceslaus said, and Folke knew it reflected on not just Scylfr, but the regiment as well, in the eyes of the Marines. The Marine glanced at his comrades, then looked back to Folke. His face was unreadable, and Folke wondered what the Astartes was thinking or planning.

"We will assist you, Lieutenant." Folke thought he'd misheard for a half a heartbeat, and then he blinked.

"I'm sorry, lord, but di-" The Astartes smiled. He moved his hand away from Folke's shoulder, and used it to gesture at the kneeling infantrymen behind him.

"Stand, all of you! We shall march to you men's objective _together_! Secure it _together!_ And you shall be able to tell your grandchildren that you marched, and fought, and _won!_ Beside an Astartes!" They cheered the Iron Knight, because they were men, and they had been feet away from being ground beneath the treads of the enemy's tanks, because they were cold and wet and tired. They cheered because they were Imperial Guardsmen, and their beloved Emperor's Angels of Death had seen fit to grace _them_ with their presence, with their aid, and with a story to tell each other and grandchildren until the end of days.

They cheered, because, at heart, they were Imperial men set to the task of the Emperor's wars, and his very _sons_ would be joining them. Folke cheered, too, swept up in the thought that he would be blessed enough to fight beside the Emperor's Astartes. "Vox your regimental commander, Lieutenant and inform him that we're taking command of your company," the Astartes ordered. "Then we'll tune ours to your regimental frequency."

"As you will, lord Astartes." Folke beckoned for Johansen to come, and Johansen held the handset out for Folke to take. He mouthed that it was set to Regimental, and Folke took the handset.

"Come in, Company-1, over."

"Company-1 actual acting, Scylfr is dead. We've broken an enemy tank push from the flank with the aid of a squad of Astartes, and they're taking command."

"Copy, Company 1 Actual. Which Lieutenant am I speaking to?"

"Folke, sir,"

"Well done, Folke. You may have rescued the regiment, man, over."

Folke smiled. "It is the men that did it, sir. I just led them, over."

"Then continue to do so. Over and out." Folke handed the handset back to Johansen, and turned to Sergeant Ceslaus.

"We are at your command, my Lord Astartes."

The Iron Knight put his helmet back on, and the voice that came through the amplified vox in the helmet's grille was booming and echoing, the better to terrify the Emperor's enemies with.

"First Company, gather in," it roared, and Folke had the feeling that Ceslaus hadn't even raised his voice. "Your comrades in arms are pinned in Kinmen, mere minutes from us. We go to rescue them, and carry the Emperor's guiding light to those shorn of its comforts once more. You will advance to the town, eradicating all enemy resistance, while we aid your brethren in the rest of your-?"

"Battalion, lord," Folke supplied helpfully. The massive helmet nodded.

"Battalion. You have your orders, men of the Emperor! See them through to victory, advance and destroy the enemy!"

The company saluted, and Folke turned back to them. "Forward by fire and maneuver, men, just like we practiced on the Founding Field and then the transport ship." One of his men handed him the lasrifle he'd lost in the melee, and Folke knew that when General Zweibroken heard about this, heard about five Knights saving a battalion of Zweibroken's beloved Skanians, he would swear an oath of loyalty and friendship to the Iron Knights. If the worst were to happen and the Iron Knights Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes needed assistance, be it recruits or military support or even currency to help pay for warships, Skania would return the favor, tenfold.

"Butcher's bill, if you please, Theo," he asked. Instead, it was Carpelan that answered.

"Sergeant Theodorus caught a round crossing the river after you, sir."

Folke swore, and Carpelan's cool blue eyes held a hint of worry in them. "This is unbecoming, Lieutenant Folke," the Astartes rumbled from behind him. Folke blanched, concerned that the Space Marine's good opinion of them had soured because of him. "You have lost your Platoon Sergeant? This is war. Losses will happen. Instead of lamenting the loss of the man, mourn the loss of his experience. Your Sergeants are Sergeants for a reason, yes?"

"Yes, lord," Carpelan nodded. Folke hefted his lasrifle, checked his dagger and sword, laspistol and grenades.

"Butcher's bill, then, Carpelan."

"Scylfr, Theo, six others in the crossing, three in the firefight."

"We thank you for your assistance, lord Astartes," Folke told Ceslaus. The Marine nodded once. "We shall see you in the town or beyond, my lord."

"Fight well, men of the Imperium." Folke made the sign of the aquila, then turned back to his men.

"Come on, you sorry lot! Let's show the Astartes what Skanians can do! _Go pa!"_

They walked into a town of death, and it started to snow. Bodies lay piled like cordwood, wearing local PDF uniforms and Cecjan Drop Trooper uniforms. There were more of the former than latter, and some wore armbands decorated with the Imperial Aquila. Folke's company, for it was his company, now, with none of the other Lieutenants willing to step forward and take over, and Scylfr dead, picked their way through the piles and stacks of corpses. Every now and then, a man would fall out of formation and void his stomach's contents. There were bodies with their skulls blasted apart, brains leaking out. Folke saw one body with its hands covering its stomach, trying to shove blue intestines back into the gaping hole of his stomach.

He felt his own gorge begin to rise, but Folke did his best to ignore it. They had a job to do, and as they went past burnt out houses and dead soldiers, he had one question: where were the bodies of the enemy? He turned his head, searching, looking. He swallowed again, took a sip from his canteen. Was that movement in a second level window? _No,_ he decided. The sounds of the firefight at the river crossing turned desultory, slowed, and then finally ceased.

There were few sounds in the town. A door creaked. A man puking behind Folke. The soft clatter of men's equipment knocking against other equipment filled the road, and Folke finally gave in. He turned aside and was sick. When he was done, he wiped his mouth with his tunic's rolled sleeve. They pushed past a dead loyalist PDF trooper, lying dead where he had fallen. The company stayed in staggered column on either side of the road into town.

Folke was unwilling to commit to fully spreading out and clearing the town, wary of ambushes attempting to shred his ad-hoc command piecemeal. At the same time, he knew that if they _didn't_ , the enemy, if they did hold the town, would have the chance to circle his command through the houses and back alleys, and shred it from the sides. Damned if he gave up, and unwilling to press forward without greater numbers, he raised one hand in a clenched fist, signalling his men to halt. They knelt or took cover behind burnt out shells of civilian ground vehicles, painted in a wide stripe of different colors.

The town _smelled_ of wholesale death, men's voided bowels and lasrifle fire, the acrid stench of smoke grenades and cruel fire from grenades. Folke grimaced, and motioned to the vox-operator.

"Vasa, contact Regimental and request they get a move on." The vox-operator saluted, then trotted away while a heavy-stubber team covered him. Once he was a few feet away from Folke, Vasa leaned against a wall and was heavily sick, losing his breakfast and probably last night's dinner as well. Vasa had done well to last until this point, Folke decided, and it didn't reflect badly on the lad that he lost his stomach now. Once he recovered, the younger Vasa knelt and began speaking quietly on the vox-caster in their war-cant.

Folke turned, looked down the street, and grimaced. There, lying sprawled against a wall, was a child. No more than five or six, the young boy wasn't peaceful in death. Instead, he laid face up, like he was sleeping, but the sight of the small hands cradling at a twisted stomach drew a scowl from Folke, and he stood.

"On your feet, lads. We're pushing in, and we're going to rout the bastards." He kept the lasrifle clutched tight to his chest, and there was a burning sensation in his gut. Not sickness, not anger. He knew it intimately, of course, had let it _drive_ him to literal murder for his sister, and now Folke welcomed it. If it had been the locals, loyalist or otherwise, that had done this, then he'd see the Emperor's Justice done. If it had been the Droptroopers, then he'd still see the Emperor's Justice done. It might be slower in coming, might take _years,_ but he'd see the _Sky-father's_ justice done, and that _always_ came. He reached a hand up to touch the symbols of his faith, and then he turned to Carpelan.

"No psalms, no battle cries. We are the Sky-Father's vengeance, and his vengeance is silent." Carpelan nodded, and turned to repeat it to the trooper behind him. Down the line it went, and Folke motioned to Vasa. "Stay close, and inform the Lord Astartes that we're pushing up to the center of the town."

He led the company forward in silence, fury and hate burning in his heart and gut, all thoughts of being sick lost. There was no time for being _weak._ They headed further into town, past more piles of bodies, burnt out ruins of buildings, shells of vehicles riddled with scorch marks from lasfire. Someone wanted this town, and badly, and the loyalist unit put up a staunch enough fight that everything was silent as Folke led his men through the aftermath.

They went into the center of town and found naught but more death, more destruction. The stone gray sky seemed a surly reflection of what had to be every man's mood as they moved through the town. They went forward, and found no enemy to unleash their wrath upon. In the center square, they took cover and knelt around a statue of a man of noble bearing and brow, coronet upon his head, with a longsword with an up-curved crossguard held point down into the plinth. A plaque, in a language Folke couldn't read, no doubt described who the hero was. Snow began to fall, and his men, rural districtmen from the _aett_ Ahelmil, lifted the black scarves tucked into their tunics over their noses and cheeks, protecting their lungs from the cold air. Folke did the same, and Carpelan spat before he did so.

"Snow won't stick," he promised once his face was secure behind the black cloth. "'Tisn't cold enough. Set my warrant 'pon it, sir." Folke didn't say anything behind his face covering. Instead, he clenched his lasrifle tighter and turned to cover a different direction. There was no opposing fire, no grenades, not even a taunt. With a hand motion, Carpelan gestured at two squads to begin clearing the buildings around the outside of the square. They split off, lasrifles held at the ready, bayonets flashing in the weak sunlight starting to break through the cover of the heavy gray clouds. They went fast and hard into their designated buildings, shooting doors off their hinges before entering behind the fastest soldiers in the squads, their speed translating to surprise and quickness in the clearing.

There came no sound of lasrifle fire, no sounds of a struggle, and when his men returned, Folke nodded. "There's naught but dead bodies, sir," one of the sergeants saluted. The town is clear." Folke ordered the rest of the company that was answering to him to spread out, to secure the square, and there they awaited the rest of the regiment and the Astartes. Now, with no prospect of combat imminent or directly upon him, Folke felt the first churning in his guts, and his knees were weak. His hands, he noted, weren't shaking.

Colonel Vasa strode into the center of the village with Sergeant Ceslaus of the Iron Knights and Commissar Dubreton beside him, a squad from the Grenadier Company keeping pace with them. The Grenadiers moved with their lasrifles held up to their shoulders, scanning the village for targets that were a threat to their Colonel. Folke and his men were moving in shirt-sleeves and suspenders dangling, their lasrifles, tunics, and webbing stacked in neat piles by threes on the edges of the town's center. They had laid the corpses of their fellow Guardsmen, the First Cecjan Drop Troopers, out neatly, organized by unit and rank. Then they'd covered them with blankets, greatcoats, sleeping rolls. Anything that the Skanians had been able to find. Folke stood from where he had been about to lift one more Droptrooper, and then carefully picked his way through the lines of dead Drop Troopers. He made it to Vasa, snapped to attention, and saluted.

"Lieutenant Folke," Vasa greeted. Folke dropped the salute, then relaxed. Vasa was a tall, powerfully built man - he'd earned his officer's commission as a dog-body trooper in the 287th Skanian, an infantryman. He'd carved a bloody swathe for twenty years with the 287th before returning home to Skania, and the eyepatch and scar near his graying hair said that it hadn't been easy.

"Colonel. We've secured the town and begun performing what last rites we could without the aid of a chaplain for our men and the Drop Troopers." Vasa nodded, then turned to Sergeant Ceslaus and Commissar Dubreton. They conferred for a moment, and then Vasa stepped forward. He held out a hand, and Folke took it to shake.

"Well done, Folke. You're on the short-list for Captain, now." His grey eye held a cool regard for Folke, who nodded.

"I can't take credit, Colonel," he said. "It was Sergeant Ceslaus and his squad that did most of the work of pushing into town for us. If they hadn't saved us from those tanks, I think I wouldn't be here." The Space Marine's head swivelled to gaze at them, his brown eyes and pale face unreadable.

"The Lieutenant is humble," the Sergeant said. "Humility is good in a soldier and a warrior, Lieutenant. But he assigns us, and myself, too much credit. He, and his men, were willing to turn on five tanks with naught but frag grenades and lasrifles to save their comrades. Their courage is an inspiration, even to Astartes."

Vasa glanced up at the sky, then glanced back at Folke. He nodded once. "I'm putting Scylfr's company up for a Unit Citation, then. General Zweibroken is friends with High General Haybart, he'll push it through." Folke swallowed, then nodded.

"It was what was our duty, Colonel," he protested. But not too hard. His men would be glad of recognition of their courage.

"There's duty and then there's going beyond and above it, Lieutenant," Commissar Dubreton broke in. "Karolus, with your leave, I'm going to speak with the Sergeants in the town. We need to know what wiped out the allied troopers _and_ the enemy."

"All right," the Colonel said. "I'm sure you'd like to go back to your men, Folke. Lieutenant Ljonhalm from Company Four will be the Light Company's new Captain." Folke nodded, then saluted. Vasa waved it away, and turned to go. Folke turned back to his men once Vasa's attention had left him, and went back to the body he had been in the process of working on. He knelt, closed the man's green eyes forever, and then snapped one of the man's identification tags off the chain worn around the neck. He placed it in the pouch he'd attached to his pants belt for that purpose, with the two hundred eighty-nine others. Then he gently, oh so gently, lifted the body up as though the man were a bride to be carried across the threshold of a new home, and carried him to the appropriate position in the formation of the dead. When he turned, he almost dropped the body. He didn't, though, because that was an indignity he wouldn't force upon the dead.

Behind him, Ceslaus of the Iron Knights loomed, silently. He cocked an eyebrow, the motion incongruous because of the lack of hair on the man's head. Folke shrugged. "They're the honored dead of the Imperium, my lord Astartes. From the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Imperium. Doesn't it say that in _the Sayings of Thor_?"

Ceslaus nodded. "It does," he rumbled. His helmet dangled from a chain at his belt, and the two-handed chainsword Ceslaus carried was leaned against a shoulder. "If you were to fall, you would want someone to do the same for you?"

Folke inclined his head in agreement. "Aye, my lord Astartes. Skanian regiments burn our dead and inscribe their names on boulders carried from _home_ , but aye. I'd want someone to do the same for me." Ceslaus drove his chainsword into the cracked cobblestones that made up the ground of the town's square, and knelt. Reverently, he picked up a body of his own, closing the man's eyes with a gentleness hidden by his size.

"Lead on, Lietuenant," he said, and the two soldiers carried their somber load to where the corpses' comrades awaited in death. When the carriers of the dead made it to the corpse's appropriate location, they laid them down as gently as they could. Behind Folke and Ceslaus, Chaplain Viraden was reciting the Litany of Last Rites, and Ceslaus tilted his head. He knelt, the better to listen, and glanced at Folke.

"Will you translate for me?" Ceslaus whispered. Folke nodded, unwilling to interrupt the chaplain. He waited until the Chaplain had finished at one man, made the aquila over him, moved on, and then started.

" _Sky-father, great and terrible in your wrath, we entrust this man's soul to your mercy and_ salissa, _where he will sit at your feet until the Day of Reckoning comes. Grant that he fight beside you in the End Battle, where all shall kneel before your might. Or, should it please you, let him rest as long as you wish. Ours is the service unto you, Immortal Emperor who shelters and guides us in all things and in war. As you will it, so let it be."_ Viraden made the aquila again, then stepped to the next man.

Ceslaus watched, and Folke thought he could hear the gears turning the machinery of the Astartes' mind. He stood and gestured for Folke to follow him, so the Skanian did. The wound he'd taken in the thigh at the first set of defensive positions a day ago or so was troubling him now, and so Folke followed the Iron Knight with a slight limp. One of the medics had slapped a bandage on it and told him to rest is as soon as he could, but the forced march to Beecher's Grove, the fight there, and then the fight earlier in the day at the river had left Folke _hurting._

He wanted to lie down and sleep for two days, eat something hot, and then sleep some more. Instead, he stopped when the Space Marine did. Ceslaus knelt once more, facing Folke.

"A powerful prayer, Lieutenant. The Emperor and Dorn will receive the dead of this day with joy at having such heroes beside them."

"Thank you, my lord Astartes." He wondered why the Marine wasn't wearing his helmet, or even gone- everything Folke had heard on the troopship about Space Marines had led him to believe that if they struck, they struck fast and then were gone.

In the distance, as space was being cleared from the central square by burial parties, a working party from the Sixth Company was setting up the regimental shrine tent. It contained gilded icons of the Emperor, Saint Langley, and the regimental standard topped by an aquila worked in gold and silver, and when the weather was good and campaigning permitted it, the sides of the tent would be rolled up and the chaplains would hold Sevenday service in it for the assembled regiment.

The Astartes' eyes and face were unreadable. Folke tilted his head, popping his neck. A voice came over Folke's microbead, and he recognized it as the new Captain for the Light Company.

"Folke, Ljonhalm here. The Company is billeted in a row of townhouses near the north side of town. The company designation is chalked on them. Get your platoon here and prepare to bed down. The Colonel has ordered us to have a rest."

"Yes, Captain," he said, and it burned Folke to know he would have to salute that aristo piece of filth, barely worth the gilding on his tunic's shoulderboards. Instead, he spat. Ceslaus watched, unspeaking.

"I must go, lord Astartes. I need to see to my men." The giant stood and inclined his head.

"I understand, Lieutenant. An officer's duty never ends." Ceslaus made the sign of the aquila. "The Emperor guide and protect you, soldier."

Folke returned the Aquila, and then, spurred by something - gratitude or something else, he didn't know - he gave the Astartes his own benediction: "The Sky-father preserve you and grant you many enemies to slay, lord Astartes." He turned and gathered his platoon around him, now thirty-odd men instead of fifty. He shared a joke with Squad Two's marksman, Jan Värja, lit a lho-stick, and led the men that trusted him with their lives to where a bed, and hopefully dinner and sleep, waited.


	6. Chapter 5

**Five**

He needed to hurry, because being caught in a Skanian snowstorm meant death. If one was lucky. If not, it meant a slow descent into madness and cannibalization and murder, out at the furthest reaches of society. So he hurried. He didn't try to walk on top of the snow already coating the ground, three or four feet deep in some places. Instead, he bulled through the white powder, not caring about the expenditure of precious caloric energy. Because he needed to hurry. He _had_ to hurry.

In the distance, he could the air raid or storm sirens wailing. One rising, one falling, one rising blast meant a storm dangerous to be out in. The air raid sirens hadn't sounded in centuries. Now, in this dim forest he was searching through, he heard them. The air raid siren was a harsh, staccato noise, designed to break through the heaviest of sleep. _How did he know what a Skanian air raid siren sounded like?_

He called - someone's name. He didn't know it. He opened his mouth and called, and sound was _made,_ but he didn't know who or _what_ he was calling far. He needed to hurry. A chill went down his spine, beyond even the harsh cold that foretold a Skanian snowstorm, those storms that could last months and leave entire forest homesteads covered past the building roofs, that would steal the breath from even the throats of full grown, strong men. He took another step forward, and then he seemed to pause midair. A feeling of panic rose up in him, and he swallowed.

 _Who was he? Why couldn't he remember?_ He tried to remember why he had to hurry, but all he could draw to his mind was that he needed to find _them_. But who was _them?_

He tried to turn, to look for a trail or a sign, but all he could see were trees and snow and a dim, sullen sky. He felt the hair rise along his arms and the back of his neck, and his hand plunged to his belt for a dagger that wasn't there. He grimaced. Where was _she?_ Was it a _she_ he was hunting for? Why did he have to hurry against the storm?

He felt as if he couldn't move. He struggled to take another step, and couldn't. The warning sirens intensified their shrieking, and he knew that urgency was required like never before. He _had_ to find _them. He felt an electric shock run down his spine, stiffening him, and then he felt_ _ **everything.**_

 _Suddenly, he knew as clearly as he knew there was a man named Alexander Folke. He could see himself standing in the trees, the cheerless clouds making the sky dull grey._

In the distance, almost invisible through the trees and dying light, he saw a figure. He knew without the shadow of a doubt that as he had had to find her so urgently, so she had found him, instead.

 _ **you need to come soon**_

 _Why?_

 _ **Because I need your help.**_

 _I'll try._

 _ **You always did.**_

He had the fleeting feeling that she was smiling, and the faintest hint of something sweet-smelling, something soft and delicate. And then shackles around his wrists and ankles appeared, dragging him backwards, away from what he needed to be doing. He looked down and saw a double-headed eagle, blind in one eye. Face distorted with fury, he roared his rage and anger, his desperation. Something went through his chest, and he felt the throb of sharp pain, cutting in through his hate suddenly.

He looked down, and saw a sword run through his heart. He looked back up, and caught the slightest, most transient glance of _red._

* * *

Alex Folke woke up. His eyes opened as soon as he was aware of the world, and the world he found himself in was wrapped in his sleeping blanket, using his greatcoat as a pillow. The room he was in was small, closer to tiny than anything else, and had only a desk for the report he needed to write about the previous day's action.

He sat up, dislodging the blanket, and saw his lasrifle and saber propped against the desk, with his combat webbing on top of it, the dataslate he had been issued on top of the webbing to keep from breaking the precious technology. Outside his small room in the rowhouse, his platoon was sleeping six or seven men to a room, with their lasrifles and webbing piled in hallways.

He stood, folded his blanket, and then placed it neatly atop his pack in the corner away from the door. He couldn't remember his dream. He remembered a bit - a flash of red, a smell he didn't know, but there was a pain in his chest like he'd been stabbed, and he wondered if he was dying. _Commissar hasn't given you dispensation to die yet, old lad, so it's to it._

He tugged on his webbing, securing it in place with the side release buckles. The saber and lasrifle went next, one to its place at his hip, the other slung on his shoulder. The dataslate went into the pouch pocket of his pants on his left hip, and the heavy laspistol went into its holster. Ready to face his day, Folke went through the door into the hallway, and was confronted with organized madness.

Smiling, he returned his men's greetings as they pulled on webbing or saluted, pushed each other out of the line to the field kitchen fetched by one of the other platoons. The Light Company, living up to its name, even in a Light foot regiment, had divested itself of anything unnecessary. Folke made his way through the detritus of men preparing themselves to march fast and fight harder at the end of it. Tossed aside were small pocket books, entrenching tools, greatcoats, packs with spare clothing.

"What's with the tossed stuff, Sergeant?" He asked Carpelan. The lean Sergeant shrugged, his mustached upper lip curving up into a smile.

"'Nother fight, Lieutenant, what else? Word from Battalion HQ is we're moving out in a few hours."

"Why wasn't I woken up?" Folke gratefully accepted a steaming bowl of porridge, made with what he presumed were local grain supplies. Carpelan shrugged.

"I tried. You kept sleeping, so I figured you needed it. 'Sides, if anything really important had come up, I'd have dragged you to the briefing if needed."

"Thanks, Sergeant. I'll buy your next drink," he promised, and Carpelan smiled. Spooning some of the porridge into his mouth, Folke dodged past one of the men from his weapons squad cleaning and wiping down a heavy stubber. The long barrel had a bipod deployed to prop it up while the man worked on the receiver. He tipped his cap to Folke with one finger, eyes still on his work.

"Make sure she's ready for some serious business, Corp," Folke told the man cheerfully, and then took a cup of _caf_ from a trooper holding it out to him. He clattered down the stairs of the rowhouse to find one of the older infantrymen of his platoon cheerfully regaling a group of younger men about the time he'd been caught out in a Skanian storm. There was a fire roaring in the hearth, and in the kitchen someone was singing _Boria Igena_.

Folke stood listening to the man while he finished his porridge and caf. Something about being caught out in a storm seemed familiar, but he ignored it- he had never been out in a Skanian storm, where snow could cover entire homesteads for months at a time. Folke was a hiver, born and bred, and the thought of being caught out in the wilderness, away from the cradling support of the Guard sent a shiver down his spine. His father's family had been working in the same iron foundry for over four centuries. Well, they _had._ Folke was a Guardsman, now, and proud of it.

He stepped into the kitchen after finishing his meal and handed the dishes off to a Private apparently told off to wash dishes as punishment for some slight. The Corporal that stood at the stove was taller than Folke, with cool blue eyes that regarded him for a brief instant, then turned back to a simmering pot.

Folke's combead crackled in his ear, and the voice of Captain Ljonhalm spoke. "Folke, report to Battalion HQ. It's in the center of town, in the town hall. They've got a job for the Light Company."

" _Ja, herne,_ " Folke responded. He hitched up his sword belt, tucked the flap on his laspistol holster closed, and stepped out of the side door in the kitchen of the rowhouse and into more snow.

His breath misted in front of him as he stepped outside, and he turned right back around and asked a Private to fetch his greatcoat. Folke stood just inside the doorway and then fetched a lho-stick from his tunic's breast pocket. The Private returned, greatcoat in hand, and Folke tugged it on over everything except his lasrifle. He stepped back out into the sullen morning, snow falling in flurries that stuck for a few seconds and then melted. A dismal fog hung over the town, low and gray. _My life seems to reflect shades of gray,_ he thought. He set off for the Battalion HQ in the center of town, and decided he would start writing a letter to Elise once he was done there.

He picked his way past rubble turned into hard points defended by grim looking men from the line companies, saluted the Grenadier Captain, and nodded to the other Lieutenants he saw out on the business of their platoons and companies. None of them greeted him. He finished his lho-stick, tossed it aside, and then spat. Drawing his greatcoat tighter around him, Folke resolved that he'd show the bastards in the officer's mess why he deserved to be there.

When he finally made it to Battalion HQ, he was patted down by two grim looking grenadiers with their lasrifles held at port arms, greatcoats open over their carapace breastplates decorated with gilt Imperial aquilas, and with the much coveted knitted, dark blue wool caps with flat crowns on their heads. They saluted Folke after patting him down and allowed him through into the town hall that now functioned as the HQ.

He stepped inside into a brightly lit hallway, with the HQ aides moving back and forth at a fair clip dodging around him. Folke took his own cap off, squashed it flat, and shoved it in his tunic's breast pocket. An aide took in his appearance, from the sword, laspistol, and rifle slung over his shoulder, to his unshined boots.

"Lieutenant Folke?" The aide was a Lieutenant himself. Folke nodded, and was greeted with a salute. "Captain Ljonhalm and Colonel Vasa are in the town officer's office. The other Light company platoon officers are all on their way in, too. I'll show you the way." The aide turned before Folke could respond and led him through the brightly lit hall into a side hall, up a set of stairs, and down another hall. The aide knocked on the door, was told to enter, and held open the door for Folke.

"Thank you," he told the younger man. Folke stepped into the room past the aide, and saluted the four men inside. Commissar Dubreton, Colonel Vasa, Major Bielke, and Captain Ljonhalm all returned his salute.

"You're here early," Ljonhalm said. "Good. We'll be briefed when the other three Lieutenants arrive. What's your platoon strength like, man?" He made it sound like Folke had wasted his men's lives, and Folke wanted to swear at the man bitterly. Instead, he swallowed his anger and pride.

"Thirty-six," Folke said. Thirty-six from fifty, from fifty that should have been sixty-five but for sickness and injury before they had even made planetfall. He wanted to snarl that Ljonhalm wasn't Light Company, couldn't understand that he had spent his men's lives as sparingly as he could, but that sometimes war was _war_ and that if he had had a choice none of them would be lying beneath their bedrolls or greatcloaks, eyes closed forever, awaiting the Final Fire and then the carving of their names into the Regimental Stone.

Instead, he swallowed his anger and pride and waited for his superiors to speak their judgement. Commissar Dubreton and Colonel Vasa merely looked down at a sheaf of paper on Vasa's appropriated desk, Vasa made a note, and that was it. Ljonhalm stared at Folke, and Bielke said nothing.

The other three Lieutenants arrived then, into the heavy silence of Folke silently castigating himself for the loss of his men, and he almost wanted to be sick as they filed in. Instead, Folke swore silently that he'd do better next time, and that he would get most of his men home. _By the Saint, I'll make it happen!_

"Now that we're all here," drawled Major Bielke. "We can begin. The Light Company, commanded by Captain Ljonhalm, is going to push back across the river, at the bridge _here_ -" here he indicated on a map a bridge a kilometer to the north of where the Skanians had forded the river in blood and steel. "You're to secure it and meet the 24th Atalantan Armored, and then guide them back here. The other three battalions of our 312th are on their way. With the 24th Atalantan in support, we're going to push further in towards the planetary capital."

"Aw hells," Ljonhalm swore. "Where's their mechanized infantry regiment?"

"Munitorum cock-up means that _they're_ half a planet away, and the 24th are just going to have to make do with us poor light Skanians," Colonel Vasa answered. "Now we're turning it over to Commissar Dubreton for the portion of the briefing regarding civilians and local PDF units that put down their arms."

Dubreton watched Folke for a moment before he started, his eyes unreadable. Folke thought about stepping outside after the briefing and finding a nip of some akvavit that one of his men undoubtedly had.

"Civilians are to be treated with all respect due citizens of the Imperium, and PDF units that surrender are to be rearmed and used to supplement Guard forces" Dubreton said. "This from Commissar-General Berne himself." Vasa snorted, clearly disbelieving of Berne, notorious for being a hard-ass, even for a Commissar, being so soft on the citizenry of a planet in open revolt. If Folke was a wagering man, he'd be willing to bet that it was because of the Adeptas Sororitas facilities on the planet, and the Commissariat and Guard weren't willing to make enemies of the Emperor's Daughters.

Of course, Folke wasn't willing to make an enemy of an Emperor's Daughter if he had any choice about it, and with luck, they would be operating in an area far removed from himself and his men. He'd heard rumors from older officers up from the ranks, in other regiments, that the Sisters were something truly remarkable to fight beside.

"This is a fairly straightforward task, gentlemen," Bielke took back over. "Guide the armor here, and then in the probing attacks that General Beauregard has ordered we're to find the points the armored boys need to crush." Ljonhalm nodded seriously, his face drawn with concentration.

"Understood, sir," he said. "When are we to depart?" Folke thought it a good question, but kept that to himself. Instead, he pulled a small, black-leather bound notebook from one of his tunic pockets, found a pen, and readied himself to begin making short-hand notes. Beside him, the other two Lieutenants and one Platoon Sergeant taking over for the injured Lieutenant Singr did the same.

Bielke repeated the briefing, and then kept on. "Light Company is to depart at 1100 hours, the better part of two hours from now. Ljonhalm, your total strength is 217 men, out of 260. That should be enough to take care of any bushwhackers in the trees, but don't be afraid to have the Armor shoot things." He stopped, then, almost as if it were an afterthought, added: "Don't let the men ride on the tanks, Captain. Light infantry don't ride when there's marching and fighting to be done."

Ljonhalm nodded, and then the briefing was broken up. Folke finished his notes, shoved the booklet back into his tunic pocket, and waited until he was outside of the Regimental HQ to comm his sergeants. He disseminated his own briefing, emphasizing that they'd be headed into an area unlikely to have been cleared, and that their main job was to provide a cover for the armor regiment from any enemy infantry. As he went through what he knew with his men, he watched the center of town. A few civilians had emerged, whether from hiding or from outside of the town, and were now picking through the ruins of their lives. The Droptroopers and PDF unit that had held the town had wrecked it thoroughly in their staunch, and ultimately fatal, defense of the place.

He finished briefing his sergeants, and Folke decided he had enough time to visit the shrine tent set up where earlier there had been rows and rows of bodies, covered with blankets and shrouds, awaiting burial. Now the tent that stood in their place was dark blue, with the sides down from where they could be pinned up. Folke made his way across the square, greeted the two Grenadiers standing guard outside of the shrine tent, and stepped through the cloth doorway. Inside it was dim, with burning incense, ferried from holy Ophelia VII at huge expense to the Skanian planetary government to grace a regiment's shrinal tent before embarking on the Emperor's holy wars.

On the tent wall facing the entrance, there were gilded images of the Emperor, his martyred son Sanguinius, and the Skanian's own beloved Saint Langley. The Emperor's noble brow seemed creased with worry, Sanguinius appeared rapturous, and Langley, with her red hair and blue eyes, seemed far too young in the depiction Folke saw before him to have saved his world. Folke went to his knees before the images and the gold Aquila above the regiment's standard, bowed his head, and made the sign of the Aquila.

"Lend me the strength and wisdom to see my men through this," he said. "I am but a mere man, and I fear I shall not see the way through to victory in Your name, noble Emperor." The incense was heady, and Folke's head felt heavy. On his shoulders, he thought he felt the weight of his men's lives, the burden of command, the burden of _leading,_ even though it was entirely metaphorical. Folke grimaced, but he knew he wouldn't change it for anything- as the God-Emperor shepherded men's souls through the Empyrean darkness of the Warp, so too was it up to Folke to shepherd his men through their time in the Guard, and try to keep them alive as long as possible.

He dry-swallowed, throat suddenly dry. The weight of his burdens bore down on him, and the Emperor stared at him from the icon. With a conviction that he didn't know he had, Folke knew in his heart that the Emperor knew his sins as surely as Folke did, that he was being judged. He knelt there, head bowed, and there came no answer to his prayers.


	7. Chapter 6

**Six**

The first they knew of the 24th Atalantan Armor approaching was the sound of engine after rumbling engine approaching up a paved road. The road was Folke's assigned task, and his platoon was covering it with all lasrifles in the tree-lines on either side, heavy stubbers forming the pins of the L-shaped ambush he had laid. He stood in the road, his men unseen to either side of him, lasrifle slung casually on one shoulder. They weren't sure if this was the right armor column approaching, and so Folke stood in the road, lasrifle slung, pistol holstered. Because they couldn't risk a friendly fire incident. A Skanian artillery officer had ordered his men to shoot short, and he had been flayed alive for the Guard regiment that his men's shots had slaughtered.

Folke took a drag on his lho-stick, doing his best to project an air of indifference. Inside, he was chanting a litany of prayers to the Sky-Father and Langley that this was the right armor column. They came around the corner of the road slow, with a recon vehicle up front. The gunner swiveled to aim at Folke almost as soon as the vehicle slowed, and then stopped. Folke raised his hands from his sides.

"Hallo?" He called in Low Gothic. Folke took a breath, then waved. A tank came around the side of the recon truck, main gun aimed very deliberately at the tree-line. Even going slower than walking pace, the engine's rumble was a huge roar that blasted his ears, and it was easily twice the size of the recon vehicle. On the rear of the turret, Folke saw a flagpole, with an Imperial Aquila hanging from it. He recognized it as a Leman Russ with an extremely long gun barrel, probably a Vanquisher, thanks to "Friend or Foe?" briefings on the troop ship.

"Advance and be recognized, suh," drawled the tank's commander. His head came out of the turret, and he swivelled his auto-stubber to aim directly at Folke. The man on the gun of the recon vehicle swivelled his to cover the other tree line, and Folke had the feeling that this was a routine they'd gone through before. He took the requisite number of steps forward, stopping when told.

"Lieutenant Folke, Light Company of the Skanian 312th," he said. The commander of the Leman Russ pulled himself out of the turret hatch and stood on the top of the tank, small black cap tilted jauntily. He crossed his arms across his chest, gazing at Folke.

"Captain Wickham Zebulon, suh," the man on the tank drawled. Folke stared back at him, steady and waiting. The man's brown hair was slicked back on the top beneath the cap and shaved at the sides, and his brown eyes held no trace of wariness or temper. "I have the pleasure and honor of being commander of Company A, 2nd Battalion, 24th Atalantan Armored. Wave your men forward, suh," Zebulon drawled. Folke did so, and his fellow officers in the Light Company came out of the treeline. Ljonhalm greeted Zebulon, and they began discussing the coming march.

Folke turned to Carpelan and led him, and his squad leaders, away from the tank. Once they were a few meters distant, nearer the treeline than the road, Folke posed them a question. "How're the lads doing?"

"Morale's good," Carpelan answered instantly. "We've lost a few lads, and they know it, but we haven't stopped winning fights since we've landed planetside, and they know that, too."

"Good. I don't know what kind of fight we're in for after we start advancing again, but the armor support should be nice." This was new territory for Folke. He'd been an officer for all of four months, now, and some aspects of command were still ethereal and all of it seemed a little unreal to him at times.

Folke wished Theodorus still lived. The Troscan had been a good Sergeant and quite capable of guiding Folke without it seeming like he was ordering him around.

"The lads are ready for a dust-up," Carpelan said. "They want the locals to know that the men from Skania's Ulandr district are here, and ready to go down to cold steel if needed." Folke nodded. He knew that his men liked him, because they hadn't fragged him or ignored orders and they'd followed him, willingly, into the fights after they'd disembarked at the spaceport and helped secure the surrounding area. He'd led a squad in clearing a compound in Lethorn, the city around the spaceport, and that had seemed to cement their opinion of him, even though the division commander, General Zweibroken, had approved him as a transfer to the 312th from the 311th.

Behind them, someone called Folke's name. He turned, and was greeted by the Atalantan tank commander having clambered down. He extended his hand for Folke to shake, and Folke accepted it. "Ya'll boys ready for a ride, Lieutenant?" Zebulon's grip was firm, and aside from the bushy mustache on his upper lip he seemed like a decent sort to Folke. "Your captain has said we're moving behind ya'll boys."

" _Ja,_ " Folke answered. "It should be clear, but our Colonel is worried about partisans coming out of the trees, or remnants of the traitor PDF forces. We will march, _herr_ Captain, and do our duty."

Their duty was thing that weighed on Folke's shoulders like a mountain. Duty to the Emperor. Duty to the Guard. Duty to his sister and her son, duty to his men. All of them mountains crushing him beneath their weight, and what would he do if they diverged? When they diverged? _What I must,_ Folke decided. He was in the Guard to protect his sister and her son. _What I must. Whatever that is, and I pray the Saint and Emperor my soul to keep._

Ljonhalm called the company from their positions in the woods where they had been covering the woods on either side of the blacktop, with the most under-strength platoon, Third, left as a quick reaction reserve. The men filtered onto the road in their fireteams, three or four men, sharing jokes and lho-sticks as they did. Folke stood to the side, scanning his platoon as they formed up for the march back to the town that was currently their home.

He pulled his own pack from a tunic's breast pocket, and lit it. Folke let it dangle from his mouth as he paced up and down the road beside his platoon, making sure each man's alignment was correct as the tanks rumbled behind them. Finally, Ljonhalm signalled for them to begin the march, and the Skanians stepped off with enthusiasm, someone starting a rendition of _Long Way to Tunnsjaenen._ Folke hummed it as well while he marched beside his men. Their pace, the grueling quick march pace demanded by the Skanian war-manuals for light infantry regiments, was the 140-beat per minute pace that the very first Skanian skirmishers had used to protect the armies of the Saint as they cleansed the world of the enemy that had come so close to destroying it.

It was a burden, too, and Folke felt it keenly. For three thousand years, Skanian light infantry had marched to war with the same pace that their ancestors had used to keep ahead of the Saint's armies. _Does she even care that we struggle in her and the Emperor's names?_

While they marched, Folke struggled with questions of faith that he wasn't sure he should ask the _prast_ for help with. Of course the Saint _cared_ , he told himself. That was what the holy text and the Skanian Ecclesiarchy all said: she cared, she heard, and she spoke with the Emperor in his long internment on the Golden Throne. So it was said. But did she actually? He swallowed, lho-stick left forgotten in his lips. The Saint was there, he knew. Hadn't his necklace felt warm, before they went into the enemy defenses?

The Saint would see him through, Folke told himself. His parents had believed, and so he believed. He didn't know if it was enough, though. He took a drag off his lho-stick, which burned brightly. This was what the emperor's administration paid them for. March fast, smoke lho-sticks, and kill the Emperor's enemies. But Folke _knew_ deep in his heart that he was barely better, if at all, than the rural scum he led. After all, and no matter the High Gothic lessons, he was hive scum. Worse than the lowest of lows, in this regiment and battalion drawn from the rural districts that kept Stockarta fed and fueled.

But he'd prove them wrong. If it was the last thing he did, Folke would buy his sister and her son a decent life with his blood and sweat. He finished his lho-stick with one last drag, tossed it into the road in front of him, and ground it out beneath his boot on the next step.

He could feel the tiredness, now. Most of two days' fighting wore on a body, and it made itself known to him by the burning in his eyes, the weight of the lasrifle on his shoulder. His canteen thumped into his hip at an awkward angle, and he reached down to shift it. The hair on the back of Folke's neck stood up, and then the hair on his forearms did so as well. He straightened, turned his head to look.

The broadleaf trees that lined the gravel road and gave it shade hid no one. They were spaced too far apart on the sides of the road, and the fields beyond were empty of their crops, harvested before the Imperium came to reassert dominance. Still, Folke was convinced that someone had been watching him, but it hadn't been the dangerous way that underhive gang scum watched an easy mark.

He thought about it for a moment, feet still going up and down, one after the other, and then dismissed it. Unknowingly, a hand drifted to his saber, clenched the grip tightly.

A crackle in his ear told him that someone wanted to speak with him on the microcom beads. He acknowledged it, and the voice of his superior filled his ear. "Folke," Ljonhalm said. "Pick up the pace. The Regiment has received orders- we're diverting from scouting for the 24th Atalantan in the assault on Palaptinate to the small city of Breisol. The Noctae VI 489th has declared themselves... free of Guard discipline and the rulers of Breisol. The 312th has been ordered to show them the error of disobeying the Lord General's orders."

" _Ja, herre,_ " Folke responded. That meant a brutal city fight. Worse, it meant a brutal Guard versus Guard fight in a city, and he couldn't think of a more hellish environment to try and survive in. To lead his men through. _I might be hive scum, but Sky-father and Saint give me an open field fight any day of the year,_ he thought.

He cut the line to Ljonhalm and motioned to Carpelan. He fell out of formation and took up pace beside Folke. "Mutiny suppression," Folke said curtly. Carpelan swore, and the men that heard in the formation beside them voiced their displeasure.

" _Silence!_ " Carpelan snarled, and the mutterings diminished, although they didn't quite stop. Instead, they, and Carpelan and Folke, switched to their war-cant.

"I don't think killing our fellow Guardsman is what we signed up for, Lieutenant," Carpelan said. Folke shrugged.

"What we signed up for is to fight the Emperor's enemies and protect the Imperium's citizens, Sergeant," Folke replied. "Now it seems that there's work to be done."

"There's always work to be done, Lieutenant. Nobody said we'd cover ourselves in glory once it's done, though." Carpelan spat, lit his own lho-stick. At the end of the day, Folke knew, it would come to what it always came down to: mud, blood, and cold steel showing the enemies of the Sky-Father the error of their ways. But until then, it was up to Folke as an officer and gentleman to lead his men both in battle and out. And that meant knowing when to ask for help.

"Captain," he activated his micro com-bead. "Permission to ride with the tanks?"

"Granted," Ljonhalm's voice crackled over the communications link. "We'll make faster time, and I don't think Colonel Vasa will care much about upholding the light infantry reputation when it's something as important as breaking a mutiny." Folke wanted to make the sign of the Aquila at the word, but he didn't. Mutiny was insidious. He had heard stories of entire Guard armies succumbing to the disease, all because one or two generals hadn't thought it a serious threat. It would start with whispers at the platoon or company level, and then the men would find officers to side with them, as high as they could until finally they would execute whichever officers stayed loyal to their oaths and the God-Emperor. Mutinous regiments committed terrible crimes- the Rape of Torban Hive could be laid at the feet of two sister regiments, the Exlorcan 145th and 146th. They had been routed out of their holes with bayonet and grenade and all the fury that the Skanian 222nd had been able to muster, and now it fell to a different set of Skania's sons to do the same to another regiment.

Folke would see the Emperor's justice done. If it killed him. _I'm sorry, Elise. Some things are more important than seeing you and little Jan secure._ She couldn't hear his silent apology, of course- she was safe with the rest of the regiment's dependents at the space port. She would be safe there, even if he died. His blood would win her safety, if it had to.

He waved the lead tank, with _Atalanta Superbia_ written on the side, to a halt. It did so, huge engine rumbling as it idled, and Captain Zebulon popped out of his hatch, lifting his goggles from his eyes as he did so.

"What's the hold up, old chap?" He called out over the tank, and Folke clambered up on the front of the mighty iron steed, leaning on the gun. Stenciled on the gun, in Low Gothic, was _The Emperor Sends his Regards_. Folke thought it amusing.

"Orders from Army Headquarters directly, Captain," Folke replied. "We, that is, the Skanian 312th and 24th Atalantan Armored, are ordered to move to the city of Breisol and induce the Guard regiment there, the Noctae VI 489th, to cease their mutiny."

"By the Emperor, suh," Zebulon cursed. "The scum have mutinied?"

" _Ja, herr,_ " Folke replied. "Will you allow our company to ride on your tanks?"

"Of course," Zebulon said. He swapped to his regiment's war-cant, incomprehensible to Folke, and behind them the Leman Russes of the armored regiment slewed to the sides of the road to allow the Skanians ease of access to the sides and rear of the tanks to mount them, and Folke wondered what happened to the 79th Merdvennan that they were supposed to meet outside the village that had been a village of death.

* * *

The Most Ancient and Honorable City of Breisol burned. Not all of it, certainly, but swathes and sections lit the night sky with their flames. Squads of Imperial Guardsmen, Imperial aquilas ripped from their tunics and armbands, ranged far and wide through the city, their particular hunting grounds the residential sections of the city. Some of them got drunk off looted bar stock, or high off confiscated narcotics. For some, their vices ran more to the human side of things, and these men terrorized the city the most as they ransacked it looking for their prey. Four Commissars and all the regiment's officers dangled from makeshift lynches tossed over lamp-posts and statuary, but some bore the death-wounds earned in savage fighting.

They had tried to bring the Noctae VI 489th Regiment under control after the first signs of mutiny and dissension showed in the ranks. And they had died for their troubles. Now the 489th ran rough-shod over Breisol, taking as they pleased, slaking their lust for vengeance against the Guard that had taken them so far away from home on the Imperial citizens they were sworn to protect.

Breisol burned, and was sacked in an orgy of blood and violence. And miles away, two regiments drew closer. The Skanians and Atalantans were coming, and neither regiment had a soft reputation. But in Breisol, the 498th ruled with blood and terror. Citizens cowered in their homes, praying that the renegade Guardsmen would pass over them, and, cursing the God-Emperor when those prayers fell on deaf ears.

The Guardsmen cursed, too. They cursed the Emperor, the Imperium, the Guard, and the officers that had led them here to war, and then led them badly. The Guardsmen cursed when the Navy jammed all their communications devices, and when Navy fighters flew overhead on reconnaissance runs. Some of them prayed, and a few went to ground in the city, taking off their issued fatigues as fast as possible and scrambling desperately for a hiding place from the vengeance that they suspected was coming.

In a small church that lay in a suburb on the outskirts of Breisol, a woman in a long black coat and peaked cap clutched a laspistol tightly to her chest, praying silently and desperately to the God-Emperor. There came a roar from outside, and she flinched back from the sound that entered through the locked and barred door, and she prayed for deliverance.


	8. Chapter 7

**Seven**

And deliverance came for the city of Breisol. It came in the form of a full infantry regiment of fair-haired Skanian soldiers, lho-sticks dangling from their lips as their sunken topped and squared visor caps were pulled low to protect their eyes from the sun in the north as they marched towards _it._ _It_ was combat, full combat with all three battalions of the regiment, and both armored battalions of the Atalantan regiment, and General HQ said that the Noctae regiments mustered eight battalions, nearly twenty thousand men. Against that, the Skanians and Atlantans were putting twelve thousand infantry in three battalions and seventy armored vehicle in two battalions. The armor was a solid core of Leman Russ tanks, numbering forty vehicles. The Vanquisher, Exterminator, and Conqueror variants filled out the rest of the regiment's armor numbers.

Alexander Folke knew none of that. What he knew was that he and his platoon were spread across six of the lead Leman Russes, and there had been no resistance as they and the Atalantans had driven hard through the sleeper communities around Breisol, and it was in these communities that the units began to break up from the massive column marching formations that allowed a Skanian light infantry battalion to muster and move thirty miles a day on bad roads. First companies began separating from the parent formation, then platoons from companies, then squads from the platoons, until the Skanians surrounded the city in a loose chain of infantrymen with solid hammers of armor behind them, waiting to move forward with the infantry. The Leman Russ that Folke was riding grumbled to a halt outside some sort of two story building two miles from the city limits of Breisol proper, according to the map on Folke's dataslate.

The entire silent ride, the Skanians had watched as the sky reflected and then became flames from the fires burning inside the city, and miles distant, they could feel the wash of heat from one of the larger fires. Folke stood and leapt down to the road below, taking the landing in his bent knees. He unslung the lasrifle he'd taken from one of his own dead, and then slotted the bayonet into place with a metallic _snick._

"It's to be one of those, then, is it, Lieutenant?" Carpelan shrugged when Folke looked at him, and then drew his own bayonet. "Bayonets, you bastards," Carpelan growled at the platoon. _Time for a speech,_ Folke decided

"We've fought hard," he began. "We've fought hard, and we've let the traitors and rebels know that the men of Skania know fear, but fear is _nothing to us!_ Now we face a different foe, a harsher, tougher foe: our fellow Guard. But they're not our fellows, anymore. They've spat on the Guard, they've spat on the Emperor, and they've spat on the Imperium. We're Skanians! We're going to show them the error of their ways, and the Emperor and Saint Langley will see us through to the end, whatever that end might be: the glorious dead, or the heroic victors. Now let's liberate this city."

The only response from his platoon was a determined silence, and the _snick_ of bayonets being fastened onto lasrifle barrels. _Good,_ he thought. _Let's get to work._

"March fast and fight hard, you sleepy bastards," Carpelan growled, his voice harsh behind the black neck scarf that they'd all pulled over their lower faces. "We're Skanians, and the Sky-Father and Saint are watching. These silly cunts think they're hard, but they haven't seen you lot! Off the tanks, and thank the nice Atalantans for the ride, but now we've got _work_ to do, boys, real soldier's work!"

Folke could feel the desire to turn his back on the enemy, walk away and leave the fight. The fear reared its head back and made itself known in the sweat on his palms and his watery guts. Folke puffed on his lho-stick angrily, burning through it, and then used the butt to light another. He tossed the burnt-out one into the dirt, grinding it beneath his boot. _We need a break,_ he thought. There had been gaps in the formation when they'd mustered for this, men that were rock-solid foundations of the platoon, and Folke knew they'd be sore missed.

There was no break in the forecast for the day's weather. Only cold alternating with heat, and combat. _We need a break,_ he thought again, and then swallowed. He couldn't sigh. Sighing was bad for morale, even if there was no desperately needed break forthcoming. Instead, he spat once to the side, and began walking forwards, leading the way for his men.

They passed the burnt out shell of a convenience store of some stripe, shelves knocked aside and product strewn about. One man whistled, then ducked inside when the platoon's point man took a knee, leaving Folke and Carpelan standing at separate ends of the line of men. The man emerged with a grin and a dump pouch full of _chokladkaka_ , sweet candy bars made from _kakao_ beans. He began passing them forward and back, and each man that took one passed it on, so that by the end of the pouch, the only Skanian without one was Folke. He took it, then slipped it into a tunic's breast pocket.

The pointman stepped off again as soon as Folke gave a short blast on the whistle dangling around his neck. They went through an intersection of pavement similar to rock-crete, and a half kilometer away at another intersection, Folke watched a second Skanian platoon move through their intersection at a brisk walk. There was, he decided, absolutely no hurry whatsoever. The city would be there when they finished their advance. The cordon of Atalantan vehicles and a second Skanian infantry regiment meant that there might be a break-out attempt, but it would be blunted and destroyed by the tanks and dug in Skanians.

Time went by, and so too did the city. At one point, they passed a small neighborhood church with the naked corpse of a female Commissar hanging from a noose on a lamppost. Folke ordered her cut down, and one man laid an Imperial standard over her after Carpelan closed her eyes forever. The city changed, here and there, from low, single family houses and small strips of retail space (and Folke marveled at the wastage of space,) to larger multi-family buildings, office spaces and retail stores, to towering tenements and living quarters, something he was more familiar with from his time in Stockarta. The towering buildings meant danger, but also opportunity. The lho-stick in his mouth had burned to the butt, and Folke swapped it from side to side in his mouth, before finally tossing it aside, and signalled for a halt.

Behind him, Carpelan and the other Sergeants stood in a clump and started smoking lho-sticks and drinking from their canteens. Folke pulled a rat-bar out of a tunic pocket. He unwrapped it and then bit into it, savoring the tastelessness.

"They always make these things taste terrible." One of the Sergeants gave a short bark of a laugh, then glanced to Carpelan to see what he was doing. Carpelan, like Folke, had started eating a ration bar. So were most of the men, and the noncommissioned officer followed suit. Folke finished his tasteless, mostly odorless bar, and then shoved the empty wrapper into the pocket that the bar had come from.

He let his men have another few minutes of break, and then whistled the order for the platoon to advance again. They hefted their rifles, scanned the buildings around them, and searched for any tell-tale signs of an opportunistic ambush or that they were walking into a prepared kill zone.

Instead, fifty meters from where they had taken their impromptu break, Folke's platoon caught a platoon of green-coated mutineers crossing the road, all semblance of military discipline gone. Folke himself fired the first shot, a snap decision to pull the trigger as he raised the lasrifle to his shoulder to take aim.

One man spun around and went down, and the mutineers responded by rushing forwards. They tried to overwhelm Folke and his men with a fast rush, their lasguns held low with bayonets fixed. The two platoons met, blue against green, in a clatter of steel bayonets against wood and synthetic stocks. Folke caught the blade of the man charging at him on the butt of his lasrifle, and slashed at the man's throat with his own bayonet. The enemy blocked it with the finger guard of his bayonet, snarled something in his native tongue at Folke, and spat. Folke brought his knee up fast and drove it into the man's testicles, then followed through with a savage headbutt to his nose. He fell backwards, and Folke drove his bayonet into the man's eye and then his brain. He slumped down, and Folke jerked his rifle backwards, trying to recover it.

Another man came at him with a roar and bayonet-tipped rifle held high. Folke stepped to the side, leaving his lasrifle, letting the strike sail passed him, and he clawed at his hip for his heavy laspistol. He cleared leather and began firing as soon as the barrel was pointed in his enemy's general direction. The man went down, his head and skull and brain vaporized with the second shot. The sharp, acrid stench of burning flesh and vaporized hair filled the air. Someone staggered into him, sending him reeling. He slammed into the rockcrete road, landing on one hand and jarring his shoulder badly.

He rolled, and missed being bayoneted by the testicle hair on a Skanian war hound. Folke wound up beneath two men struggling to bayonet the other. He shot straight up with his pistol into the green-coated man, who dropped one hand to his stomach and then collapsed in a heap, screaming. The man in Folke's platoon he had helped jerked Folke onto his feet, roaring something wordless, and then he was gone, leaving Folke with a dislocated shoulder and a ringing in his ears.

His men, carried by a wave of faith and fury, swept aside the mutineers, an inexorable force. Some of the mutineers tried to run, when Folke's men proved too much for them to handle. His men made a game of letting them go for a heartbeat, and then shooting them down from behind.

"Throne damn them." No one asked him who he was referring to, but Folke was feeling uncharitable and he hurt, so he said it again, more savagely this time, with a curl of his lip and a scowl. Feeling a bit better, Folke went back and jerked his rifle out of the deadman.

"We need better bayonets," he said to no one in particular. "This isn't the first damned time mine has gotten stuck in a body."

"It happens, Lieutenant," a trooper said from beside him. Folke shrugged. One of the men came up with a cloth for Folke to clean his blades on, and after he'd done so Folke turned to his platoon Sergeant.

"Butcher's toll, if you please, Carpelan?" Once his blades were clean, while the Sergeants tallied up the dead and injured, Folke lit a lho-stick.

"Three of ours mustered to the Sky-Father today, Lieutenant, with another three too badly hurt to keep fighting. We got fifteen of theirs in the fight, and, well... You know what happened to the rest, sir."

"Vox it to Battalion HQ, let them know we haven't encountered any organized resistance and ask 'em if they'll send a detachment from the sister regiment to grab our wounded."

"Very good," Carpelan said, and then left Folke to look at the strewn dead in green coats. Most of them had brown or black hair, with brown or blue eyes, and Folke felt a pang of regret that they'd had to die. Worse, they'd done it badly. _I hope Father is proud of me._ The thought, unbidden, sprang from his thoughts of dying and dying well. Father had died well - everyone had told him so. Crushed and then burned up shoving one of his men out of the way of a falling crucible, there had been nothing left except his bones, which were honorably interred in the ossuary in a dusty old hall of the Ironworker's Cathedral to He on the Golden Throne.

But his father had been dead for four Skanian years now, and Folke wondered when he would join Father. _Soon,_ he thought. _Soon I will be naught but mouldering bones and a name on a rock in Hive Stockarta, my deeds lost to time and the Sky-Father alone._

The grand exhortations of the priests and commissars said that names would become dust, but deeds were eternal. Folke always wanted to ask about the men that had crusaded beside the Emperor and his nine beloved sons, the Primarchs, martyrs all.

Instead he wondered if there would be anyone to mourn him when he was gone. Would there be anyone to mourn the men they'd killed today? Certainly there would be for the locals that he and his men had killed. They were, after all, locals. It didn't matter, he decided.

"Good news, Lieutenant!" That was the Colonel's son, the other platoon voxman. Folke turned as he came up at a jog, handset held out to Folke. The smell of death lingered, men's guts spilled and blood and the ozone of lasrifles. Folke felt the fatigue in him, in his bones and spirit. It settled heavily on his spirit, and Vasa's enthusiasm would be grating if the young man kept it up.

"The Colonel has told me to congratulate you on your promotion to Captain, sir, and you'll be taking the Grenadiers once this dust-up has sett-" The shot took the younger Vasa through his neck, and he dropped the handset. His hands went up to clutch at hole through which Folke could see bits of bone.

"Find that sniper!" The snarl propelled the platoon into action, and Folke grabbed Vasa by his webbing and pulled back him into an alley. Folke dropped his lasrifle and tried to find Vasa's pack of gauze for wounds. He ripped open pockets and pouches, frantically fingering his way through them.

"Fuck," he said. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck don't die on me, lad." Vasa gurgled at him, eyes panicked as Folke shoved gauze on the front and back of the wound. "MEDIC!" He bellowed, sticky-hot blood covering his hands. _Fuck,_ he thought, doing his best to save the life of the Colonel's son. One of the platoon's medics came up, red cross on a white armband bright against the color of his tunic.

"Move, Lieutenant, let me work on him." Carpelan pulled Folke backwards, letting the medic have room to do his job.

"Save his life, doc," Folke told him. "I don't give a damn what you have to do to do it." The medic ignored him, and Folke fell back onto his legs, staring at the dark blood staining his hands. _Fuck,_ he thought. _Fuck fuck fuck. God-Emperor keep him._ A niggling doubt in the back of his mind said that there would be no miracle forthcoming for Heinrich Vasa. The medic went to work, and Carpelan helped Folke stand.

"We got the sniper, sir. You're going to want to take a look." Folke kept looking at Vasa, lying on the rockcrete of an alley, and wiped his bloody hands on his breeches.


End file.
